Hiring & Strategy
7 Harsh Truths About Why Speed Is the Worst Hiring Signal
In the silence of the workshop, competence finds its focus. In the ping of a Sunday notification, quality finds its grave.
In , a man named George Schieffelin became the most successful ledger merchant in lower Manhattan and he did it without better paper. He sold thick books to the law firms near the docks but his ink was the same as the ink in the shops next door.
He kept his shop lights burning until every night and the tired lawyers saw the yellow glow through the fog. They went to him because he was awake and they were tired.
He won the market because he was present and the presence felt like competence. It was a trick of the light and the lawyers bought the ledgers and the ledgers were fine but they were not better.
Priscilla’s Sunday Night Relief
Priscilla sat in her flat in Tseung Kwan O and it was on a Sunday. The air was heavy and the humidity was 84% and she wanted to start her renovation. She had the floor plan on her phone and she sent the same PDF to four different companies. She felt a small tension in her neck and she wanted to resolve the tension. She waited and the room was quiet.
9:22 PM
84%
Environmentals of a hasty decision: High humidity, late hours, and the urgent need for a response.
One company replied in . The man sent a voice note and his voice was warm and he sounded like a man who knew her problems. He told her the kitchen could be moved and the platform bed would fit. He said he was at his desk and he wanted to help.
Priscilla felt a specific relief and the relief was a physical thing. She told herself she liked his portfolio and she told herself the price was fair but she was lying to herself. She hired him because he was the first one to say hello.
later she sent a message at the same hour and the man did not reply. The message had two blue ticks and the ticks sat there and the man was silent. She sent another message and the silence continued.
She was deep in the project and the deposit was paid and the furniture was not yet built. She was emotionally committed and she was physically stuck and the voice note from Sunday night was a ghost.
I started writing an angry email to a contractor yesterday and then I deleted it. I realized I was the one who chose him because he answered a text while I was eating dinner on a Friday. I rewarded his lack of boundaries and then I was surprised when he had no boundaries with my timeline.
1. The Mirage of the Sunday Night Hero
The speed of a response is a measure of a sales funnel and it is not a measure of a carpenter. A man who answers a message in four minutes on a Sunday is a man who is hungry for a lead but he is not necessarily a man who is good with a saw.
The sales phase is a courtship and the courtship is a performance. In the courtship, the attention is cheap because the deposit is pending. You think the speed is a preview of the service but the speed is actually the product you are buying. You are buying the feeling of being heard and you are paying for it with the quality of the result.
2. The Structural Lie of Availability
When a company is small and fragmented, the person who answers the phone is often the person who wants the money. They have no wall between the office and the workshop. This feels like intimacy and it feels like personal service but it is a trap.
If the man is answering your text while he is on a ladder, he is not looking at your measurements. If he is answering your text while he is at dinner, he is not focused on the engineering of your cabinets.
3. The Signal Mismatch in Interior Design
We want a designer who listens but we hire the designer who talks the fastest. When you are looking for an
partner in Hong Kong, you are looking for a long-term manager. You are not looking for a sprinter.
The project will take weeks and the project will have problems. You need a person who will be there in week eleven when the tiles are late and the floor is dusty. The man who replies in four minutes on a Sunday is often the man who has already moved on to the next lead by week eleven. His business model is based on the harvest of the new and not the maintenance of the old.
4. The Fragmentation of Accountability
In many Hong Kong renovations, the designer is a freelancer and the carpenter is a contractor and the installer is a stranger. They are a collection of people and they are not a team. When the wardrobe does not fit the wall, the designer blames the measurement and the carpenter blames the drawing.
They point at each other and the client stands in the middle of a broken room. The fast response on day one does not solve the blame game on day sixty. You need a single line of accountability and you need a person who owns the factory and the pencil and the drill.
“The thief does not look for the lock but he looks for the man who is too tired to turn the key.”
– Jade H., retail theft prevention specialist
We are the same with our homes. We do not look for the best plywood but we look for the person who makes us feel less tired.
5. The Plywood and the Promise
We talk about design and we talk about colors but the home is made of wood. If the wood is low grade, it will off-gas and it will smell and it will make you sick. A fast-talking salesman will promise you the world but he will not show you the E0 or ENF grade plywood certification.
The Sales Promise
“It’s standard, it’s fine.” (High off-gassing risk)
ENF Grade Wood
Strictest low-emission standard. Safe for the home.
He will tell you it is “fine” and he will tell you it is “standard.” But standard in a crowded city is a dangerous word. You need a company that owns its own manufacturing line and uses the strictest low-emission grades because they are the ones who have to guarantee the result. They cannot hide behind a supplier because they are the supplier.
6. The Illusion of the Visual and the Reality of the Build
A 3D drawing is a beautiful thing and it is easy to make. A computer can render a room in an hour and the room will look perfect. The light will be soft and the edges will be sharp. But a drawing is not a cabinet.
The cabinet must be manufactured to the millimeter and it must account for the beams in the ceiling and the pipes in the floor. The companies that reply the fastest are often the ones with the best rendering software and the worst factory connections. They sell the dream and they outsource the nightmare.
7. The Strategy of the Single Accountable Partner
The only way to avoid the Sunday night trap is to look for a company that does not change hands. At Hohome, the designer who takes the first measurement is the same designer who stays until the final handover. There is no hand-off to a stranger.
There is no “sales team” that disappears once the check is signed. The production happens in a facility that has been running for fifty years. This is not a fast business and it is not a loud business. It is a business of accountability. When you have a 100% completion guarantee, you are not just buying furniture. You are buying the certainty that the project will end.
I remember a kitchen I once saw in Mong Kok. It was beautiful from a distance and the colors were exactly what the owner wanted. But the doors did not close and the drawers hit the oven handle.
The owner had hired a man who was very responsive on WhatsApp. The man had sent many emojis and many fast replies. But the man had never visited the factory and the man did not know how to measure a corner. The owner had a beautiful drawing and a useless kitchen.
The mismatch between courtship behavior and marriage behavior is a law of nature. In the beginning, everyone is fast and everyone is kind. But the real work of a renovation is a long walk through a difficult place. You do not need a man with a fast phone. You need a company with a heavy factory and a long memory.
We tell ourselves the decision is about the design and we tell ourselves it is about the price. But we are usually just reacting to a small relief in our chests. We want the problem to go away and the first person who replies makes the problem feel smaller.
The next time you are sitting in the blue light of your phone on a Sunday night, remember George Schieffelin. His ledgers were not better and his ink was not darker. He just had a lantern in the window. A lantern is a good thing for finding a shop but it is a terrible way to judge the strength of a book.
Look past the light and look at the wood. Look at the guarantee and look at the heritage. The silence of a busy craftsman is often a better sign than the ping of a hungry salesman.
The renovation of a home in Hong Kong is an exercise in the management of small spaces and the management of large anxieties. You can solve the space with custom furniture and you can solve the anxiety with a single point of contact.
If the designer owns the factory and the factory owns the installation, there is no place for the blame to hide. That is the only signal that matters when the sun goes down and the messages stop being answered.
Priscilla finally got her wardrobes and they were fine but the process had aged her. She learned that a voice note on a Sunday is just a vibration in the air.
The next time she renovates, she will wait for the Monday morning office hours. She will look for the person who is too busy working to answer her in four minutes. She will look for the stability of a company that has been there for fifty years and will be there for fifty more.
She will choose the bone over the ghost.