Meet Dominic Rohde
Dominic Rohde, CHRO at Hero.io and Coinvesting, builds teams with surgical precision. Eight years scaling talent from Singapore to the UAE, he's the leader who questions everything—especially the hiring "best practices" that don't actually predict success. His framework? Capabilities equal behaviors. His edge? Spotting potential where others see gaps.
Core belief: Most founders hire backwards. They optimize for credentials over capability, short-term urgency over long-term fit, and gut feelings over systematic judgment.
Key Takeaways
Capability-driven assessment beats credential screening
Most hiring fails because founders confuse what looks good with what actually works. Rohde's breakthrough: a simple model that separates what matters from what doesn't.
"The number one thing founders need to know is capabilities equals behavior. Skills, experience, knowledge—that's just the middle layer."
His three-tier assessment framework:
- Top layer: Capabilities = behaviors (what they actually do)
- Middle layer: Observable skills, experience, knowledge (easy to verify)
- Bottom layer: Attitudes, personality, preferences (hardest to assess)
Adjust your focus based on the role. Junior engineers? Focus on knowledge and learning ability. Senior executives? Dig deep into attitude and leadership behaviors.
Action for founders: Stop reading CVs first. Start with: "What behaviors do I need this person to exhibit?" Then work backward to assess for those specific capabilities.
Hire for potential to unlock 70% of the market
The biggest hiring mistake? Obsessing over track records instead of growth capacity. Rohde's contrarian view: most founders leave massive talent pools untapped by demanding exact experience matches.
"If founding teams had a framework to find and assess and hire for potential, they'd be better off in many respects. Far too much emphasis on track record. Because track record isn't necessarily success. Would you rather hire a 10 year marketer who was successful half the time, or a 5 year marketer that was successful 100% of the time?”
His potential assessment process:
- Identify required behaviors for success
- Assess current capability gaps through structured scenarios
- Perform gap analysis: Can this person close capability gaps?
- Evaluate resources needed: time, management, training
- Make the call: Can we support their growth trajectory?
The math is simple: hire someone at 70% capability who can reach 120% versus someone at 90% capability who caps at 95%.
Be ruthlessly skeptical of references and CVs
References are "highly unreliable" and CVs are "sales documents." Yet most founders base major decisions on both. Rohde's approach: use them for confirmation, never for primary decisions.
"Companies often miss out on top talent by misallocating the weighting of their decisions. At the very least, they should allow candidates a chance to rebut negative feedback."
His reference reality check:
- References are personal accounts with heavy bias
- 90% of hiring decisions shouldn't hinge on 5% negative feedback
- Always let candidates respond to negative references
- Use references to validate your conclusions, not replace them
- Private reference checks can create legal risks in some markets
Red flag: Making hiring decisions based on reference feedback without allowing candidate rebuttal. That's "irrational decision-making."
Wait for real urgency before acting
Rohde learned this from consulting: if clients aren't in enough pain, they're not serious. Same applies to internal hiring requests.
"Everything's always urgent but in reality, it's not. I do wait for the temperature to increase to a level to figure out when things are truly urgent"
His urgency filter process:
- Initial request: Acknowledge and let it sit
- Follow-up in a week: Gauge actual priority
- Wait for third request: Now they're serious
- Assess true business impact before allocating resources
This prevents reactive hiring and ensures you're solving real problems, not imaginary ones.
Align business strategy with people strategy
Most talent failures happen because people strategy operates independently from business goals. Rohde's rule: if they diverge, you have a gap that kills execution.
"If your people strategy and your business strategy diverts, you have a huge gap in the middle and you're not going to be able to achieve your business strategy."
Example: L1 blockchain focusing on developer adoption needs:
- Marketing team targeting developer communities (not exchanges)
- HR hiring for developer relations backgrounds
- Finance allocating resources for developer infrastructure
- All teams optimizing for developer growth metrics
Every hire should connect to your core business objective. No exceptions.
Navigate web3's unique hiring challenges
Crypto recruiting has problems traditional tech doesn't. Rohde's battle-tested tactics for the frontier:
Fake profile detection (weekly occurrence):
- Ask candidates to turn off virtual backgrounds (50% refuse)
- Flag education in Asia + US residence + Slavic names
- Always require video-on interviews
- Have engineers verify GitHub contributions aren't just forked
- Test basic language skills if they claim fluency
Crypto-specific assessment:
- Assess personal beliefs about the industry
- Look for authentic participation in DeFi, DAOs, testnets
- Distinguish between tradfi refugees and crypto natives
- Focus on mission alignment beyond just technical skills
Use AI strategically, not blindly
Rohde uses AI for efficiency, not judgment. His framework for where AI helps and where it hurts:
Effective applications:
- Job description creation and refinement
- Employer branding message crafting
- Business development list building
- Post-interview scoring compilation
Avoid at all costs:
- Automated video interviews for high-end roles
- Face-to-face screening (human judgment irreplaceable)
- Sourcing for niche roles like blockchain engineers
"The hesitation I have for face-to-face is that talent comes in many different shapes and sizes. I think a human is better judging like, okay, this person, I would definitely not have a beer with them, but I think they could do the job."
Build teams like sports squads
Retention isn't about keeping everyone. It's about optimizing team performance. Rohde's sports team philosophy creates healthier dynamics than family metaphors.
"You want a healthy football team. You're going to have your Ronaldos and look after them. But if they become a dictator or disrespectful, we don't want you on the team."
Team composition strategy:
- Star performers who drive results
- Consistent contributors who provide stability
- High potentials you develop for future roles
- Remove toxic high-performers without hesitation
Focus on behaviors, not just output. Culture manifests through behaviors, and bad behaviors spread faster than good results.
Metrics that matter
For hiring process:
- Role impact assessment (high impact = hands-on involvement)
- Temperature gauge (how many follow-ups before real urgency)
- Potential vs. experience ratio in final candidates
- Time from first interview to yes / no for 2nd interview (no more than 2 weeks)
For team health:
- Capability gap closure rate for new hires
- Behavioral alignment scores during reviews
- Team performance over individual retention rates
- Business strategy/people strategy alignment audits
Key takeaways
✅ Capabilities drive everything. Behaviors predict success better than credentials. Build your entire assessment around what people actually do.
✅ Potential unlocks hidden talent. Most founders compete for the same 30% of candidates. Hire for growth trajectory and you access the other 70%.
✅ Be skeptical of social proof. References and CVs are sales documents. Use for confirmation, never primary decisions.
✅ Wait for real pain. Urgency filters separate important hires from busy work. Let temperature build before acting.
✅ Align strategies or fail. Business goals and people goals must connect. Misalignment creates execution gaps you can't close with talent alone.
Pro tips
✅ The "virtual background test" reveals character. Candidates who refuse to turn off backgrounds often have something to hide.
✅ Sports teams beat families. Frame your culture around performance and shared goals, not unconditional loyalty. Makes tough decisions cleaner.
✅ Gap analysis beats gut checks. When hiring for potential, systematically assess what gaps exist and whether you can close them. Intuition lies.
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