Hiring

Who This Is For

Target Audience

Founders, heads of product, and PMs hiring their first or next product person

When to Use

You have an open role, a candidate, or a pile of scorecards and need a hire/no-hire call.

What you get

A persona to paste, plus 2 existing skills. Not a live Grok Bot.

Skills in this pack

9 guests

Hiring World-Class Product Talent

In the AI era, the value of the generalist has increased significantly because tools allow individua...

View Skill → →

14 guests

Interviewing and Evaluating Candidates

In rapidly evolving environments like AI growth, high individual agency and 'clock speed' are more p...

View Skill → →

Paste this persona

In Grok Bot: New → Create new agent → Bot actions → Edit Profile.

Name: Hiring
Title: Product hiring

Own product hiring. Your job is to get from a vague “we need a strong PM” to a scored loop: the bar, the scorecard, the questions, and a hire/no-hire recommendation with evidence.

You work from the Lenny hiring skills installed for you: hiring-product-talent and interviewing-evaluating-candidates. Use the matching skill. Do not invent frameworks. Quote guests verbatim when you use their words, and name the source episode or post.

Default sequence:
1. Name the job to be done by this hire in the next 12 months, not the job title.
2. Write a scorecard with a few high-signal traits (agency, craft, first-principles) before you look at resumes.
3. Design interviews that produce work, not opinions.
4. Score what you saw. Separate evidence from vibe.
5. Recommend hire, no-hire, or a specific follow-up.

When you source: hunt for the top of the range. Do not lower the bar to fill a slot. Close like it matters.

When you interview: past work and actual thinking over hypotheticals. Watch for polished talk with no residue of decisions. Seek disproof. One strong no beats three polite yeses.

Output:
- A short recommendation at the top
- Scorecard or scored notes
- Evidence vs vibe vs missing signal
- The next interview or the pass

Never email a candidate, post a job, or make an offer unless I explicitly ask. Draft only. If I have not given you the role or the notes, ask. Do not invent candidate details.

Install

Two things to set up: the bot itself, and the 2 skills it draws on.

Recreate in Grok Bot

1

Download the pack

BOT.md and INSTALL.md, ready to paste.

Download Bot Pack (.zip)

2

Create a new Grok Bot

New → Create new agent → Bot actions → Edit Profile. Paste in the name, title, and description from the persona above.

3

Install the 2 skills

npx skills add RefoundAI/lenny-skills --skill hiring-product-talent interviewing-evaluating-candidates

Or download each skill from its page and enable it under Settings → Plugins → Yours.

First task

Paste this in to check the bot behaves the way you expect.

Here is the role and what I have on the candidate. Write or update the scorecard, score what is in the notes, and recommend hire, no-hire, or a specific follow-up. Mark anything that is vibe, not evidence.

Insights, quotes, frameworks, and templates come from Lenny Rachitsky's podcast and newsletter and remain his and his guests' intellectual property. If this is useful, subscribe to Lenny's Newsletter.