Juan Betancourt
C-suite
Juan Betancourt spent a decade placing C-suite executives at Fortune 500 companies through Korn Ferry and Heidrick & Struggles, then discovered everything he knew about hiring was wrong for startups. Today, as CEO of Humantelligence, he reveals how he rebuilt his entire recruitment playbook after striking out on three marketing hires and four salespeople, and why giving “B and C players complete freedom” led to zero turnover in five years.
What You’ll Learn:
1. Why hiring “A-plus superstars” from your executive search days will actually kill your startup, and the “Bad News Bears” mindset that works instead
2. The critical reference check question that reveals whether someone can thrive in remote work (hint: it’s not about their resume)
3. Why you should never hire a salesperson who’s currently unemployed, and the compensation structure that filters out pretenders
4. The counterintuitive leadership flip: how going from “90% doing, 10% leading” to “90% leading, 10% doing” eliminated all turnover
5. Why letting employees make decisions you know will fail creates more productivity than micromanagement ever could
6. The psychometric interview hack that prevents you from accidentally hiring a team of clones who all think the same way
7. Why executive search reference checks are useless, but startup reference checks are everything
