Shows / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Most hiring advice is vague. This show is not. Lucas and Luna examine the actual mechanics of talent acquisition and workforce reduction: how to structure a behavioral interview, how to evaluate a candidate's long-term potential beyond the résumé, and how to manage a layoff with dignity and legal safety. They walk through real corporate cases — from Google's Project Oxygen to Amazon's 'Pivot' performance-improvement plans — and dissect the numbers behind hiring yields, employee churn, and the…
Episodes
Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce DecisionsWhy You Should Hire for Learning Agility
Episode 113 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo dives into learning agility — the ability to quickly absorb new skills and adapt. Lucas and Luna explore a case…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
When a Job Candidate Ghosts You Mid-Process
Lucas and Luna discuss the growing phenomenon of job candidates ghosting employers during the interview process. They explore why it happens, citing data from…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How a Resignation Letter Revealed Our Hiring Blind Spots
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dissect a real resignation letter that exposed a company's flawed hiring process. They…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Hiring Gaps on Resumes Are Actually a Strength
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna challenge the common assumption that resume gaps are a red flag. They explore how career…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Best Rejection Email I Ever Received
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a counterintuitive hiring practice: writing a rejection email that actually helps the…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Offer Unpaid Trial Projects in Hiring
Episode 108 of Hiring & Firing examines the controversial practice of unpaid trial projects as a hiring tool. Lucas and Luna discuss a real case: a marketing…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
When a Hired CEO Fails in 90 Days
Lucas and Luna examine the first 90 days of a chief executive officer's tenure, using the high-profile case of a CEO who was ousted within a quarter. They…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Hire from Unconventional Backgrounds
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore why some of the most effective hires come from outside the usual talent pool. They look at a specific case: a mid-sized…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Interview Candidates Outside Your Industry
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why hiring from outside your industry can yield unexpected talent. Lucas shares how a…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Hiring for Culture Add Beats Culture Fit
Lucas and Luna explore why hiring for 'culture add' rather than 'culture fit' leads to stronger, more innovative teams. They break down the…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Case for a Four-Day Work Week in Hiring
Episode 103 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores whether a four-day work week can actually improve your hiring outcomes. Lucas and Luna dive into a…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Ask About a Candidate's Worst Boss
Most interviews focus on what candidates did, not who they worked for. This episode argues that asking about someone's worst manager is one of the most…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Hire People Smarter Than You
Lucas and Luna explore the counterintuitive strategy of hiring people who outshine you. Using the example of how Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley with the…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The One Hiring Metric That Predicts Performance Better Than Experience
In this milestone 100th episode, Lucas and Luna dive into the most underrated hiring metric: learning agility. Drawing on the story of a mid-sized tech firm…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How One Company Cut Bad Hires by 40 Percent
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a specific case study of a mid-sized tech firm that slashed its bad hire rate by 40% by overhauling its interview…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How One Company Fired Its Way to a Better Culture
Episode 98 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores the counterintuitive idea that strategic firings can strengthen company culture. Lucas and Luna examine the…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Hidden Cost of Hiring Too Fast
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a common but costly mistake: hiring too quickly to fill a vacancy. They break down the…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Best Interview Question Nobody Asks
Most interviews are a performance: the candidate puts on a show, the interviewer tries to see through it. Lucas and Luna argue that one simple…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Hiring for Potential Beats Hiring for Experience
In this episode of Hiring & Firing, Lucas and Luna explore why focusing on a candidate's potential rather than their past experience can lead to better…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How Reference Calls Reveal More Than References
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a counterintuitive hiring hack: the person giving the reference might be the real…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How One Failed Hire Saved Our Company Culture
Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a startup that hired a brilliant executive who nearly destroyed their culture, and how they turned that failure into a…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Asking for Salary History Hurts Your Hiring
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why asking candidates for their salary history is a flawed practice that perpetuates…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Hire for Cognitive Diversity
Episode 91 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore why hiring for cognitive diversity — not just demographic diversity — can transform team…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Hidden Cost of Bad Hires Beyond Salary
Episode 90 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna break down a 2025 study from the Society for Human Resource Management which found that a single bad…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
What a Three-Month Probation Actually Reveals About New Hires
Many companies treat probation as a passive waiting period, but a mid-sized logistics firm in Chicago redesigned theirs as an active three-month diagnostic…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Unstructured References Are Worse Than No Reference
Most hiring managers call references as an afterthought — and it's costing them good hires. In Episode 88 of Hiring & Firing, Lucas and Luna unpack a 2025…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why a Structured Interview Beats Unstructured Every Time
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into the research behind structured interviews. They explore a Harvard Business Review…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Hire Someone Who Failed Publicly
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why candidates who have experienced a public failure often make stronger hires than…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Your Interview Should Include a Hands-On Work Sample
Most interviews test how well someone sells themselves, not how well they do the job. This episode digs into the growing body of evidence that work-sample…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How One Company Hires Exclusively by Referral Only
Episode 84 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores the radical referral-only hiring model at a mid-sized tech firm in Austin. Lucas breaks down how the…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Hiring for Resilience Beats Any Other Quality
Lucas opens with a story about a software company that hired a candidate with a perfect resume but who quit after three weeks because they couldn't handle…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Interview the Person Who Almost Got the Job
Most companies hire one candidate and ghost the rest. But a growing body of research shows that second-place finalists — people who came within a single…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How One Question Identifies Culture Add in an Interview
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why 'culture fit' is a flawed hiring lens and how a single question can…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The One Question That Reveals a Candidate Coachability
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the single interview question that can predict how responsive a candidate will be to feedback and growth. Drawing on a…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Silent Exit How Ghosting Candidates Destroys Your Brand
In this episode of Hiring & Firing, Lucas and Luna dive into the growing problem of candidate ghosting — where companies simply stop responding to applicants…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Rejection Letters Should Come With a Next Step
Standard rejection letters kill candidate goodwill and hurt your hiring pipeline. But a small number of companies are flipping the script: they send rejected…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The One Metric That Predicts Sales Performance
Episode 77 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna explore a single metric that top-performing sales organizations use to predict a candidate's…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Rejection Emails Are Your Best Talent Pool
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how top companies are turning the 'no' into a strategic asset. They focus on a specific case: a mid-size tech…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How a No-Notice Policy Cut Turnover by Half
Episode 75 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo examines a radical retention experiment: a mid-sized tech firm eliminated all notice periods for resignations—no…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How Pre-Hire Assessments Predict Performance Better Than Resumes
Lucas and Luna explore why traditional resumes are poor predictors of job performance and how pre-hire assessments — like work samples and cognitive tests —…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why the Best Hires Come From LinkedIn InMail Rejections
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why candidates who initially rejected your recruiter InMail can become your strongest…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Two-Minute Interview Rule That Reveals Real Candidates
Lucas and Luna unpack a counterintuitive hiring insight: the best predictor of a candidate's potential might be what happens in the first two minutes of…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How a 4-Day Workweek Boosted Productivity 40 Percent
Episode 71 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo dives into the surprising results of a year-long trial at a mid-sized tech consultancy that switched to a four-day…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The One Interview Question That Exposes Overconfident Hires
Episode 70 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores why overconfidence is a hidden hiring hazard. Lucas and Luna dissect a 2025 study from Harvard Business…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How a No-Notice Policy Cut Turnover by Half
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore the counterintuitive strategy of a no-notice resignation policy. When a mid-sized tech…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Hiring for Curiosity Beats Experience
Episode 68 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores why traditional experience-based hiring fails and how one company cut mis-hires by 40% by screening for…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why the Best Hires Come From Rejected Applicants
This episode explores a counterintuitive hiring strategy: tapping the pool of candidates you previously rejected. Lucas and Luna examine research from a 2025…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The 90-Day Warning That Reveals Who Will Quit
Most turnover models predict departure too late. In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a finding from a 2025 Gallup meta-analysis: the employee's 90-day…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Surprising Reason ExEmployees Make the Best Hires
Episode 65 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores the untapped potential of boomerang employees—people who leave your company and later return. Lucas and…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How a No-Notice Policy Cut Turnover by Half
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a startling hiring experiment: a mid-sized logistics company eliminated the standard two-week notice period for new…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
How Recruiters Can Predict Performance From Writing Samples
Episode 63 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo explores how written application materials — cover letters, short-answer responses, and even email replies — can…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The Hiring Algorithm That Learned Bias From Human Data
In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine how algorithmic hiring tools inherit and amplify human bias using the example of Amazon's abandoned…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The One Question That Predicts Employee Turnover
For decades, recruiters have relied on gut feel, reference checks, and structured interviews to gauge how long a new hire will stick around. But a 2025…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
The 5-Second Hiring Rule That Cut Mis-Hires by 60 Percent
In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine a startling hiring study: how a simple change in the first five seconds of an interview, allowing candidates to speak…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Hire People Who Failed Before
Lucas and Luna dig into a counterintuitive hiring strategy: why candidates with a prior failure—a startup that folded, a product launch that flopped, a project…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why One Hiring Metric Predicts Employee Retention Better Than Interviews
Lucas and Luna dive into the surprising finding that a single metric — the time between application and first live conversation — predicts whether a new hire…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Your Best Hires Come From Talent Hoarding
Most companies think internal mobility means letting people transfer departments. But the most effective approach is what some firms call 'talent…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Reducing Hinge Questions to Three Improves Candidate Quality
Lucas and Luna explore how limiting initial job application questions to three critical items dramatically increases completion rates and candidate quality…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why Hiring for Culture Add Beats Culture Fit
In episode 55 of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why the popular hiring strategy of 'culture fit' often backfires by creating…
- Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions
Why You Should Hire People Who Criticized Your Company
In this episode of Hiring & Firing with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore a counterintuitive hiring strategy: actively recruiting candidates who have publicly…