What if the candidate who looks perfect on paper is exactly the one you shouldn't hire?
Eight Season 4 guests, from a bike brand to an industrial giant to three small hardware studios, keep landing on the same answer from completely different directions. The flawless CV, the fixed job spec, and the polished portfolio are the least reliable signal in the room.
What actually predicts a good hire is fit, curiosity, and how someone handles a question they weren't ready for, whether that's a new hire asking what to do, a job title that almost puts the right person off applying, or a founder telling a candidate outright that the business isn't for them.
Join the Why Design community to keep this conversation going, and to hear how other hiring managers in physical product are solving the same problem.
This episode is sponsored by Vax and TTi Floorcare. Kodu, is running the hiring. Recruiting for Vax for more than ten years, placing over fifty people including a VP of Engineering and a Head of Design. We know how they build. Right now they’re rebuilding their UK engineering and innovation function from the ground up: advanced development, design engineering and industrial design, all at once. We haven’t seen them move at this pace in a decade of working with them.
What You'll Learn
- 🔍 Why the candidates who look imperfect on paper often make the better hire.
- 🗣️ How to spend most of an interview on the person, not the portfolio.
- 🧩 Why building a team around available talent beats writing a fixed job spec.
- 🏷️ What one wrong word in a job title does to your candidate pool.
- 🧭 Why independence matters more than hand holding on a small team.
- 🎯 How to spot the fit that actually predicts whether someone stays.
- ⚙️ Why a specialist hire is sometimes worth more than a confident generalist.
Memorable Quotes
"It's the grit in the oyster that creates the pearl." Will Butler-Adams, Brompton (S4E06).
"If you knew, you wouldn't be hiring that." Will Butler-Adams, Brompton (S4E06).
"That tends to be a unicorn every time." Tylan Tschopp, Westinghouse (S4E08).
"What happens if you didn't have this role?" Rich Thrush, Guitar Center (S4E03).
"I'm not gonna hold anyone's hand, I'm not gonna micromanage." Paul Marshall, Rapid Fluidics (S4E07).
"Maybe our kind of business is not for you." Paul Metaxatos, Motive Design (S4E09).
Newlane : https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E1
Guitar Center: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E3
FutureWave: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E4
Diplik: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E5
Brompton Bicycles: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E6
Rapid Fluidics: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E7
Westinghouse: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E8
Motive Design: https://www.whydesign.club/episodes/S4E9
🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube & Amazon - https://whydesign.club/
👥 Join the Why Design community - https://teamkodu.com/whydesign/
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📸 Follow @_whydesign on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@_whydesign
📸 Follow @kodurecruitment on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kodurecruitment/
🔗 Follow Chris Whyte on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte/
About the Episode
Why the Perfect CV Is the Wrong Hire, A Why Design Guide on Hiring (SN 4 Recap) is a Season 4 compilation episode of Why Design, the podcast hosted by Chris Whyte, founder of Kodu. Each episode brings together founders, engineers, and design leaders working at the frontier of physical product to talk honestly about what it takes to build hardware teams that ship.
About Kodu
Kodu is the specialist recruitment partner for hardware and deep tech teams. We place industrial designers, mechanical engineers, and product development leaders in companies building physical products, from medtech and consumer hardware to robotics and mobility. We work with founding teams and global R&D organisations alike, and we understand what great looks like in the room, not just on paper. NPS: +92.
teamkodu.com
