The Math is Wrong!

Let me tell you about an old math puzzle that explains why everyone gets hiring wrong.

Not wrong in a "you're doing it wrong" way, but wrong in a "the universe is designed to make this hard" way.

Back in the 1950s, some mathematicians got obsessed with what they called the Secretary Problem.

It's simple but brutal…just like real hiring.

You need to hire one person.

You don't know how many candidates you'll see.

Could be 10, could be 100.

They come in one at a time.

After each interview, you have to decide right there: hire or pass.

No callbacks.

No maybes.

No "let's grab coffee in three months."

You can only judge candidates against people you've already seen.

Is this person better than the last five?

You can tell that.

Are they better than the next ten who might walk through the door?

Nobody knows.

The mathematicians eventually cracked it.

The perfect strategy is to look at the first 37% of your candidates and let them all go by.

Use them to set your bar.

Then hire the next person who's better than everyone in that first group.

But here's where it gets interesting:

How do you know when you've hit 37% if you don't know the total number of candidates?

You can't!

The mathematicians were solving an idealized version of the problem.

Outside the classroom…you have to estimate.

You guess how many candidates you think you'll see total, then use that to calculate your sample size.

Maybe you think you'll see 5 candidates over three months. So you decide to reject the first 2 no matter what.

Of course, your estimate could be way off.

You might only see 3 candidates, or you might see 15.

That uncertainty is part of what makes hiring so messy.

Even if you execute this flawlessly - even if your estimate is perfect - you still only have a 37% chance of hiring the best person.

That's the mathematical best-case scenario.

At Sagan Passport, we see members bang their heads against this challenge every day.

Reality adds even more fun to the mix:

• Nobody tells you how many candidates are out there

• Great people have options (lots of them)

• Every day without a hire costs you time & money

Here's what I tell our members: It's proof that the “perfect hire” is a myth!

Not because we're bad at hiring, but because it's mathematically impossible to guarantee you'll find the best person.

Want your brain to really hurt?

The math says that with an infinite candidate pool, you should reject 63% of candidates before even thinking about making an offer.

But that's garbage advice for building a real business.

Here's where this math puzzle gets practical:

While you can't beat the raw mathematics of hiring uncertainty, you can absolutely tip the odds in your favor by leveraging expertise and proven processes.

At Sagan, we try & solve both sides of this equation.

First, we handle the candidate pool problem - our members tap into pre-vetted talent networks we've spent years building.

But more importantly, we've done this ourselves.

We know what "great" looks like because we've hired hundreds if not thousands of international team members across every imaginable role.

When you're working with people who've already seen the patterns, who've already made (and learned from) the mistakes, that theoretical 37% starts looking a lot more like a practical sure thing.

Think about it this way:

The Secretary Problem assumes you're starting from zero, interviewing candidates one by one with no context or expertise.

But what if you had a trusted advisor who's already interviewed thousands of candidates, who knows exactly what "great" looks like in every role, and who can help you calibrate your expectations before you even start looking?

That's why companies who work with us consistently build high-performing international teams while others are still trying to convince people to take “Culture Index” (lol).

We've taken the uncertainty inherent in hiring and replaced it with process, expertise, and community knowledge.

The math may say perfect hiring is impossible.

But with the right partner, great hiring happens every day.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

Passage of the Week

“Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form."