In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Wade Foster, Co-founder & CEO of Zapier, about his counterintuitive discovery that doing 20+ reference calls per executive finalist was the breakthrough that fixed his 50/50 executive hiring hit rate. Wade shares why he returned to approving every offer after watching standards slip, his specific reference questions that reveal culture fit across a decade of companies, and how he shifted from hiring impressive resumes to deliberately assembling executive teams with complementary behavioral traits.
His insights reveal how auditing process thoroughness rather than overriding decisions, and treating references as puzzle piece collection rather than validation, can transform executive hiring outcomes.
Topics discussed:
- Why Wade shifted from hiring "been there, done that" executives with strong logos to deliberately assembling teams where behavioral traits (bold risk-taking, operational soundness, communication/storytelling) are as intentionally distributed as functional representation, requiring brutal self-awareness about which CEO weaknesses to cover versus double down on strengths.
- The CEO offer approval framework with a sub-24-hour SLA that audits "did we probe where we needed to probe?" rather than evaluating the candidate directly, walking the fine line where hiring managers maintain ownership without "licking the cookie" and deflecting decisions upward to Wade.
- The 20+ reference methodology per executive finalist, deliberately collecting multiple managers, peers, direct reports, and founder/CEOs across companies spanning a decade, asking "compare to the best person you've worked with, rate them 1-10, and what closes the gap to 10?" to understand skill ceilings.
- How asking references "what will this person's biggest fans say and biggest critics say?" creates ammunition for subsequent reference calls where you can test provocative claims, forcing references to either confirm uncomfortable truths or vigorously defend the candidate when critiques don't match their experience.
- Why fully green references signal a red flag at the executive level, since effective leaders are necessarily "demanding plus supportive" which creates mixed feedback, and how asking about company culture fit ("what types thrived, what types didn't?") reveals whether your environment will set them up for success or failure.
- The mutual evaluation conversation where Wade brings all reference findings back to the finalist, explicitly naming strengths and growth areas, then encourages them to back-channel him as CEO too, framing it as "are we both signing up for each other's beautiful mess?" rather than hoping it works out.
- Why frontline managers who hire once yearly lack pattern recognition to spot "tiny yellow flags" worth pulling versus glossing over, and how Wade's high-volume hiring reps let him see threads that easily unravel candidates, justifying his process audit role despite it appearing like micromanagement.
- The "Zapier on Zapier" procurement gate requiring teams to attempt building on Zapier before buying point solutions, creating a specific product feedback loop when use cases fail, while maintaining honest judgment on clear exceptions like payroll processing that Zapier will never build.
- Using pre-interview automation to compile candidate briefs from application data, prior interview notes, and public internet presence, then post-interview feeding transcripts through rubrics to generate AI assessments that Wade compares against his own scorecard as a "rubber duck" to strengthen his evaluation.
- The philosophy that hiring decisions require maximum information surface area since you're "inevitably getting one tiny puzzle piece about this person," and while each piece contains bias and inaccuracy, collecting more pieces in aggregate washes out bias better than rejecting imperfect data sources.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search
