Talent Acquisition and People Strategy: Insights&Advice

How Startups Define Roles Wrong (And Why They Keep Hiring “Almost Right” People)

Founders rarely say:
“We don’t know what we’re hiring for.”
They say:
  • “The candidates are good, just not quite right.”
  • “We keep compromising.”
  • “We hired someone senior, but execution didn’t improve.”
  • “It looked clear in interviews, but it’s messy in reality.”
This isn’t bad judgment.
It’s a definition failure.

Why “almost right” is a system outcome, not bad luck

When startups repeatedly see “almost right” candidates, it usually means one thing:
The role was never defined in terms of execution.
Instead, it was defined by:
  • skills
  • experience
  • seniority
  • background
  • vague traits (“independent”, “strategic”, “hands-on”)
These are proxies, not requirements.
This is why even great senior hires fail when the role itself is misdefined.
Candidates can match them convincingly — without being able to execute in your reality.
This is one of the earliest signals that startup hiring has become structurally broken — a broader pattern where effort increases but outcomes don’t improve. We map this full breakdown in Why Startup Hiring Feels Broken (And Why More Effort Won’t Fix It).

The hidden difference between roles and problems

Startups often hire roles when they should be hiring problem ownership.
A role sounds like:
  • “Senior Product Manager”
  • “Lead Engineer”
  • “Head of Growth”
A problem sounds like:
  • “Decide what not to build when priorities collide”
  • “Ship under incomplete data and changing constraints”
  • “Stabilize execution when inputs keep shifting”
  • “Own decisions that can’t be escalated”
Roles describe position.
Problems describe execution responsibility.
When you hire roles, execution remains fuzzy.
When you hire problem ownership, execution becomes explicit.

Why skill-based role definitions fail at Series A–C

At Series A–C, complexity increases faster than structure.
What breaks first is not competence — it’s context handling.
Skill-based definitions fail because:
  • they assume stable inputs
  • they ignore decision ambiguity
  • they hide ownership boundaries
  • they overestimate alignment through experience
This is usually a sign that the organization hasn’t answered what must be true before hiring starts.
Two people with the same skills can perform very differently when:
  • priorities change weekly
  • information is incomplete
  • trade-offs are irreversible
  • escalation is costly
Execution is not a skill.
It’s behavior under constraint.

How vague definitions force compromise

When execution expectations are unclear:
  • there is no hard “no”
  • every candidate feels negotiable
  • urgency overrides clarity
  • compromise feels rational
Founders experience this as:
“We had to move forward — the role was open too long.”
But the real issue is this:
Without a clear execution bar, you can’t confidently reject anyone.
Compromise becomes the default because the system gives no alternative.

Why interviews can’t fix a bad role definition

Many teams try to solve this by:
  • adding interview rounds
  • asking harder questions
  • involving more stakeholders
  • pushing deeper on culture fit
But interviews cannot clarify what was never defined.
If execution expectations live only in founders’ heads:
  • interviews become interpretive
  • feedback becomes subjective
  • alignment is assumed, not tested
This is why interviews feel exhausting — and inconclusive.
When execution expectations aren’t defined, hiring decisions feel risky — and risk invites opinions. That’s how ownership quietly disappears as startups scale, a breakdown we unpack in Why Everyone Has an Opinion but No One Owns Hiring Decisions.

What “good” execution actually looks like (and why it’s rarely written down)

Execution definition doesn’t mean:
  • more KPIs
  • detailed job descriptions
  • long competency matrices
It means answering a small set of uncomfortable questions before hiring:
  • What decisions will this person own when things are unclear?
  • What does “good” look like after 90 days — in outcomes, not effort?
  • What problems will stop escalating once this role is filled?
  • Where will execution break if this hire underperforms?
  • What trade-offs must this person make without permission?
If you can’t answer these clearly, hiring will remain subjective.

The execution definition test (simple and brutal)

A role is execution-defined if:
  • two interviewers would independently agree what “good” looks like
  • candidates can self-select out when they hear the reality
  • compromise feels uncomfortable, not inevitable
  • rejection decisions feel confident, not defensive
If none of these are true, the role is underdefined.

How this connects to the bigger hiring breakdown

This is why:
  • “almost right” candidates pile up
  • compromises happen under pressure
  • everyone has an opinion
  • founders stay involved
  • mis-hires compound
Execution definition is the first structural failure in broken hiring systems.
Everything downstream inherits this ambiguity.
When execution is vague at the role level, misalignment isn’t caught early — it compounds quietly. That’s why the real cost of a bad hire shows up months later, as we explain in The Real Cost of a Bad Hire (Why It Never Shows Up Where You Expect).

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • “Almost right” candidates are not a sourcing problem — they’re a role definition failure.
  • Startups hire roles when they should hire problem ownership.
  • Skill-based role definitions fail at Series A–C because execution depends on decision-making under ambiguity, not experience alone.
  • When execution expectations are vague, compromise becomes inevitable.
  • Interviews cannot fix roles that were never defined in execution terms.
  • Good execution definitions make rejection easier, compromise rarer, and decisions more confident.
  • If you can’t clearly describe what “good” execution looks like after 90 days, hiring will remain subjective.
  • Execution definition is the first structural fix in broken hiring systems.
UnitiQ works with Series A–C tech founders to redesign hiring around execution, ownership, and real outcomes — so hiring stops slowing the company down.

If you want to sanity-check what’s breaking in your hiring system, we can walk through it together.

👉 Book a conversation

What comes next

Once execution is defined, two new problems appear:
  • Who actually owns the decision?
  • How do you prevent opinions from replacing accountability?
That’s where most startups break next.
We’ll unpack that in the next article:
Why Everyone Has an Opinion but No One Owns Hiring Decisions

About the author

Olga Fedoseeva is the Founder of UnitiQ, a talent acquisition and People Projects partner for Series A–C tech startups across EU, UKI, and MENA.
She helps founders in Fintech, AI, Crypto, and Robotics move from role-based hiring to execution-defined hiring — so teams regain momentum and founders get out of hiring mode.
Talent Acquisition