I want to tell you about two hires I've watched play out. Not at my company. At client companies. Two different organizations, two very different outcomes. And both of them taught me something I keep coming back to.
[CORD: Story 1. A hire where the capability was obvious. The resume was perfect. The technical skills were exactly right. But the character wasn't there, and it showed up within six months. What happened? How did it damage the team? Be specific about what "character failure" looked like in practice. Was it how they treated people? Was it a lack of integrity in a key moment? Was it the way they operated when the pressure came? The more specific, the better.]
That first hire looked right on paper. And I'm not being dismissive when I say that, because paper matters. Capability matters. You need someone who can do the job. But here's what I've learned, and I'm still learning it, if I'm being honest: capability without character doesn't just underperform. It actively damages the organization. It erodes trust. It teaches the rest of the team that the company will tolerate behavior that contradicts its stated values as long as the numbers look right. And once a team learns that lesson, it is very, very hard to unteach it.
[CORD: Story 2. A hire where the character was clear from the first conversation. Maybe the resume wasn't the most impressive one in the stack. Maybe they didn't have the exact industry background. But something about who they were as a leader was undeniable. What did that look like? How did you or the client recognize it? And what happened after they were placed? How did that person change the team around them?]
That second hire is the one I think about when people ask me what makes FireSeeds different. Because at the end of the day, we are not just looking for someone who can do the job. We are looking for someone who can do the job and multiply the people around them. And that second thing, the multiplying, that only happens when character is present.
The False Trade-Off
Here's what I run into all the time, and I want to be really honest about this because I think a lot of companies are making this mistake without realizing it. The assumption is that you're choosing. That you have to pick between the candidate with the better resume and the candidate with the better character. That capability and character sit on opposite ends of a spectrum and you need to decide where on that spectrum you're going to compromise.
I don't believe that. And I'm not saying that from some idealistic place where I've never had to make a hard hiring decision. I've made plenty. I've made bad ones. I've hired people I shouldn't have because the capability was too impressive to pass up, and I've paid the price for it. I've also been in rooms where a client was ready to make an offer to the wrong person because the skills were right and the timeline was tight and nobody wanted to start the search over.
But here's the deal. The trade-off is false. It feels real in the moment because the pressure is real and the vacancy is real and the business can't wait. But the cost of hiring a leader who has the capability but not the character is almost always higher than the cost of extending the search. I've seen it play out dozens of times. The capable leader without character will deliver results in the short term. Six months, maybe twelve months. And then things start to unravel. The people underneath them start leaving. The culture shifts. The founder or CEO starts getting calls about behavior they never saw in the interview process because, and this is the part nobody likes to say out loud, character issues almost never show up in interviews. They show up under pressure. And pressure doesn't arrive until the person is already in the seat.
What We Actually Mean by Character
I want to define this because I think the word gets used loosely, and when it gets used loosely it loses its power.
When I say character, I am not talking about whether someone is a nice person. Nice is fine. Nice is not what I'm after. I'm talking about something deeper than personality and more durable than behavior in a comfortable setting.
Character, the way I mean it, is what a leader defaults to when the pressure comes and the playbook doesn't have a page for it. It's the thing that determines whether a leader tells the truth when the truth is expensive, or whether they find a way around it. It's the thing that determines whether a leader takes responsibility when something fails, or whether they find someone beneath them to blame. It's the thing that determines whether a leader develops the people on their team even when those people might eventually leave, or whether they hoard talent and information because it makes them feel secure.
Character is not one trait. It's a pattern. And the pattern reveals itself over time, which is exactly why it's so hard to evaluate in a standard interview process.
How We Evaluate It
I'm not going to pretend we've got this perfectly figured out, because I don't think anyone does. But I will tell you what we've learned, and it's come from placing hundreds of leaders and watching which ones thrived and which ones didn't.
First, we listen for consistency between the stories a candidate tells and the way their references describe them. When a leader has genuine character, the stories match. Not perfectly, because people remember things differently, but directionally. The leader who says "I invested in my team" and whose former direct reports say "that person changed my career" is telling you something real. The leader who says the same thing but whose former team members are vague or careful in their language is telling you something real too, just something different.
Second, we ask about failure. Not the polished "what's your greatest weakness" kind of failure. Real failure. The decision that cost the company money. The hire they made that didn't work out. The project that went sideways on their watch. Character shows up in how a leader narrates failure. A leader with character owns it. They can describe what they learned without turning the story into a redemption arc that makes them the hero. A leader without character deflects. They have an explanation for everything, and the explanation always points away from them.
Third, and this is something I care about deeply, we look for evidence that the leader has developed other leaders. Not managed them. Developed them. There is a profound difference between a leader who runs a team and a leader who grows a team. The leader who grows a team is investing in people who may eventually outgrow them, and they're okay with that. That's character. That's what multiplying leaders looks like in practice.
[CORD: Is there a specific framework or set of questions you use in candidate conversations to get at character? Even two or three signature questions that you've found reveal a lot? Naming them here would give this section real tactical weight and make it something readers can immediately use in their own hiring.]
Why This Is the FireSeeds Differentiator
I could tell you about our process. I could walk you through the Bullseye Meeting and the weekly rhythm and the candidate evaluation framework and all of it. And all of that matters. But at the end of the day, what makes FireSeeds different is this: we refuse to separate character from capability in the way we evaluate leaders.
Every search we run is built on the conviction that you should not have to choose between a leader who can perform and a leader who will protect and strengthen your culture. Those should be the same person. And when the search is run the right way, with the right alignment and the right evaluation and the right discipline, they usually are.
In Part 2, I'm going to get into how we actually structure a search to surface both character and capability, including what happens in the Bullseye Meeting and how alignment at the start makes it possible to hold the bar on both. And in Part 3, I'll talk about why this matters even more for faith-driven companies, and what it looks like when the "character" conversation includes the question of mission alignment.
But I want to leave you with this for now. If you're in the middle of a search, or about to start one, ask yourself honestly: are you willing to hold the bar on character even if it costs you time? Because if you are, the leader you end up with will be worth the wait. I've seen it. And I keep seeing it.
If that resonates, I'd love to hear what you're learning about this in your own organization.
Cord Sachs is the founder of FireSeeds, a retained executive search firm that places C-suite and VP-level leaders across construction, home services, electrical engineering, and Kingdom-minded organizations.
Ready to start a search? Contact the FireSeeds team.