Hiring Panel — 3-Lens Hiring Decision Review
Review a candidate before you make an offer: finds unverified skills, explained-away red flags and pay or culture mismatch in a solo founder's first hire. Reviews resume, interview notes and work samples before an offer. Three blind lenses (Skills Verifier, Red-Flag Hunter, Culture & Cash-Flow Realist) flag issues, then cross-examine each other, then a board verdict tags every finding CONFIRMED, CORROBORATED or DISPUTED with a suggested fix and ends with a hiring recommendation. It is deliberately not encouraging and never invents experience or red flags. It is not a background check or reference verification service and does not verify identity, employment history or credentials.
Example input
Use the Hiring Panel on this (a sample I wrote). I'm a solo founder of a small e-commerce analytics tool (about $9k MRR, 14 months of cash at current burn). I want to hire my first full-stack engineer and I'm leaning toward extending an offer to "Candidate K" tomorrow. Budget I told myself: $85k base, no equity beyond 0.5%. Resume: "Senior Full-Stack Engineer, 6 yrs. Acme Widgets (2023-2024, 8 months), Foo Labs (2021-2023), freelance (2019-2021). Skills: React, Node, Postgres, Kubernetes, ML pipelines, team leadership." Interview notes: Strong talker, very confident. When I asked why he left Acme after 8 months he said "bad fit, long story." Asked to describe a Postgres performance problem he fixed, he spoke about "tuning stuff" without specifics. Said he wants "full ownership, no micromanaging" and hopes to move to $110k within a year. Wants to work only async from another timezone. Work sample: a 2-hour take-home, a React todo app with no tests, submitted a day late with a note: "ran out of time, backend is mocked." Email: candidate-k@example.com
Example output
## Phase 1 — Independent findings
### ✅ Skills Verifier
- Resume claims "Kubernetes, ML pipelines, team leadership" with no project, work sample or interview answer supporting any of them. Consequence: paying for seniority the founder never saw.
- Asked for a Postgres performance problem he fixed, he spoke about "tuning stuff" without specifics. Seniority claim ("Senior, 6 yrs") is unsupported by the depth of that answer. Fix: ask him to walk through one query plan live.
- Work sample is "a React todo app with no tests... backend is mocked." That does not match a full-stack role at an analytics tool. Fix: give a second, role-matched sample (a small API plus a query).
- If the titles were removed, the only demonstrated skill is basic React.
### 🚩 Red-Flag Hunter
- "Bad fit, long story" for leaving Acme after 8 months is an evasive answer to a direct question. Resume also shows freelance 2019-2021 with no clients named. Consequence: a repeat departure after the founder invests in onboarding. Fix: ask for a reference from Acme and Foo Labs.
- Take-home was a day late with "ran out of time," for a 2-hour task. Predicts delivery problems under deadlines.
- Resume says "6 yrs" but listed roles total roughly 6 years only if the freelance period counts; the tenure at Acme (8 months) is the only recent job change, and nothing explains it.
- Confident delivery in the interview with thin specifics is the pattern most likely to have predicted a failed hire.
### 💰 Culture & Cash-Flow Realist
- Wants "full ownership, no micromanaging" and fully async from another timezone. A solo founder with no management bandwidth has no way to catch drift on a hire whose first work sample was incomplete. Consequence: weeks of unseen work.
- Expects $110k within a year versus the $85k offered. That is a 29% raise on a business with $9k MRR and 14 months of cash. Fix: settle compensation bands and review criteria before the offer.
- Role scope: the resume lists React, Node, Postgres, Kubernetes, ML and leadership; the job at one salary risks being three jobs' worth of work.
- Equity of 0.5% with a stated raise expectation suggests the candidate may see this as a stepping stone.
## Phase 2 — Cross-examination
- [Skills Verifier #2, vague Postgres answer] challenged by Red-Flag Hunter: "A single vague answer could be nerves; but it matches the evasive Acme answer." / corroborated by Red-Flag Hunter and Culture & Cash-Flow Realist: "Unverified seniority justifies a salary he already expects to rise."
…Real output from running the skill on a sample problem, shortened. The skill file itself is not published here.