I’ve been building teams for over a decade.
And I’ve watched the same pattern play out again and again…
The person with the most impressive resume struggles while someone with half the experience thrives.
The perfect technical hire can’t adapt when the company changes direction. The “risky” hire who lacked specific experience ends up leading projects and mentoring others.
The difference is never skills. It’s always mindset.
The Expertise Trap
Here’s what most growing companies get wrong about hiring… they optimize for people who’ve done the exact job before.
You need a product manager, so you hire someone who’s been a product manager at a similar company. You need an engineer, so you find someone who knows your exact tech stack.
It makes sense. Lower risk. Faster ramp-up. Immediate productivity.
But growing companies don’t stay the same for long. The job you hired for in January isn’t the job that exists in July.
Your product strategy shifts. Your market changes. Your tech stack evolves. The processes that worked at fifty people break at a hundred.
The person who was perfect for the role you hired them for? They’re lost when that role transforms into something else.
What Actually Predicts Success
I’ve watched hundreds of people join growing companies over the years. The ones who succeed long-term rarely have the most impressive resumes.
They’re the ones who figure things out. Who don’t wait for perfect instructions. Who see a problem and solve it instead of asking whose job it is.
They’re comfortable not knowing. They ask questions without worrying about looking stupid. They try things, learn fast, adjust.
When something breaks, they don’t blame the system. They fix it or build a better system.
That’s not about skills. That’s about how someone approaches the unknown.
The Middle Management Squeeze
This shows up most clearly when people move into management.
You promote your best individual contributor. They were exceptional at the work, so they should be great at leading others doing the work.
Except being great at doing and being great at leading are completely different.
The technical skills that made them successful? Almost irrelevant now. The mindset of continuous learning, of figuring things out, of adapting to new challenges? That’s everything.
75% of people promoted into management roles aren’t with their company two years later. Not because they lack skills… because they can’t adapt to a fundamentally different role.
The ones who succeed aren’t the ones who were best at the old job. They’re the ones who can learn a completely new job.
What Growing Companies Actually Need
When you’re scaling, everything changes constantly. Your processes, your priorities, your problems.
You don’t need people who are experts at doing things the way you did them before. You need people who can figure out how to do things the way you need to do them next.
The marketer who ran successful campaigns at their last company but can’t adapt when your positioning changes. The salesperson who crushed it in one market but struggles when you pivot to a different buyer. The engineer who knows one stack deeply but can’t learn the new tools you’re adopting.
Versus…
The marketer who’s never worked in your industry but figures out what resonates by talking to customers and testing relentlessly. The salesperson who’s sold different products but learns your value proposition and makes it their own. The engineer who picks up new technologies because they focus on solving problems, not just writing code.
Skills are what you can do today. Mindset is what you’ll be able to do six months from now.
How to Spot It
You can’t really test for mindset in interviews the way you test for skills. But you can listen for it.
Ask about the last time someone had to do something they’d never done before. Listen for how they approached it. Did they wait for instructions or did they figure it out? Did they ask for help or did they avoid looking incompetent?
Ask about times they failed. Do they blame circumstances or talk about what they learned?
Ask what they’re learning right now that has nothing to do with their current job. Are they curious or are they coasting?
The answers tell you everything.
The AI Factor
This is about to matter more than ever.
AI is getting scary good at skills. It can write code, analyze data, create content, build models. The technical expertise that used to take years to develop? AI can do a lot of it now.
What AI can’t do is figure out what problem to solve. What direction to go. What matters when everything feels important. How to navigate ambiguity and make judgment calls.
That’s all mindset.
The companies that win in the next five years won’t be the ones with the most skilled people. They’ll be the ones with people who can adapt fastest, learn constantly, and figure out what needs doing when nobody’s written the playbook yet.
What This Means
If you’re hiring, stop looking for perfect skill matches. Start looking for learning velocity and adaptability.
If you’re leading people, stop trying to hire finished products. Start building environments where people who want to learn can thrive.
If you’re trying to grow in your career, stop waiting for someone to develop you. Own it yourself. The people who progress fastest aren’t the most skilled… they’re the ones who never stop learning.
Growing companies need people who can grow with them.
Skills get you in the door. Mindset determines how far you go.