Stare Down the Bull EP 7: Stop Wasting Candidates’ Time: Shaun Hervey’s No-BS Fix for Hiring
By Susan Hunt
December 22, 2025
The fastest way to fix hiring, especially in sales, is to stop wasting candidates’ time, replace outdated “gut-only” decision-making with clearer evaluation, and run a process that respects people while still protecting performance.
That’s the core of my conversation with Shaun Hervey, founder of Arkham Talent and one of the most brutally honest voices in recruiting. He delivers it with humor but the point isn’t the comedy. The point is the mirror it holds up to leaders who are smart and still making ridiculous hiring decisions.
If you’re leading a sales org, hiring your first sellers, or scaling a team in an AI-fueled market, this episode is for you. It connects directly to what we talk about on Stare Down the Bull: making the hard calls, saying the quiet part out loud, and building teams with intention.
Why Shaun Hervey Knows How You Can Make Better Hires
Shaun has been recruiting in New York for over a decade, and he’s been creating content on LinkedIn since the early days of video, long before “personal brand” became everyone’s strategy. What stood out to me is that his content doesn’t work despite being blunt. It works because it’s aligned.
He made it clear: if you’re pretending to be one thing online and then showing up as someone else on the phone, the mismatch kills trust. His audience attracts the right clients. People who want honesty, speed, and clarity.
That same alignment is what most hiring processes are missing. Companies say they want top talent, but they run processes that communicate confusion, fear, and indecision. And then they’re shocked when great candidates opt out.
If you want better hires, you don’t just need better sourcing. You need a better process.
Key takeaways
1) Outdated hiring “logic” is still running the show
A lot of leaders hire the way they were taught, steak-dinner myths, arbitrary signals, and “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Shaun’s point is simple: tradition isn’t strategy.
Why this matters: If your org is scaling and you want consistent sales performance, you need a hiring process that’s modern, repeatable, and defensible. No more vibes and folklore.
2) “Gut feel” has a place, but it can’t be the whole system
We talked about that moment when someone checks every box, interviews well, performs on paper and the hiring manager says, “I don’t know, I just don’t feel right.” Shaun believes gut reaction matters for the non-tangibles, but he also warned: over-relying on gut often masks indecision or fear.
What to rely on instead: Your hiring process should reduce fear by increasing clarity with clear criteria, clear scorecards, clear ownership.
3) The startup sales reality nobody wants to say out loud: OTE is often fantasy (year one)
Shaun said plainly: if you’re a founding AE at a startup, you should be prepared to live on base salary for a while. Not because you’re not good, because zero-to-one is chaos, and pipeline + enablement + positioning often aren’t ready.
The reframe: If you’re hiring sellers early, you’re not just “hiring a salesperson.” You’re building the conditions for sales to work: marketing, ICP clarity, tools, and training.
4) Companies keep hiring “a hunter” without giving them anything to hunt with
This came up hard: leaders want a big-name seller, but they offer peanuts, unclear OTE, weak tooling, and almost no brand awareness. Then they blame the rep.
What works better: Great sales performance is a system. If you’re missing marketing fundamentals, you don’t have a sales problem, you have a go-to-market problem.
5) Ghosting is the brand killer nobody accounts for
Shaun’s #1 fix if he could change hiring tomorrow: stop wasting people’s time.
Not getting the job isn’t the issue. The issue is running someone through 8–10 steps and then disappearing.
The solution: If you care about your company reputation in a tight talent market, you need a process that ends with communication, every time.
6) Sales assessments aren’t perfect, but they can be useful
Hot take Shaun shared (and I agree): assessments can open better conversations. Not as a final verdict, but as a flashlight: “This person may be more farmer than hunter” or “This looks like AM energy, not AE energy.”
Start here instead: If you want fewer mis-hires, you need better role/fit matching before you extend an offer.
7) The missing piece: real sales training is disappearing
We talked about how earlier-era enterprise orgs trained sellers deeply, strategy, methodology, and skill, not just product. Today, too many sellers learn by trial and error inside short-tenure roles.
Path to success: If you want exceptional sellers, you can’t just “hire experience.” You need to rebuild development pathways—or your team becomes transactional by default.
Why this matters right now (AI + sales + hiring)
Shaun asked me where I think AI changes the game. My view: AI won’t “replace sellers” across the board but it will make remaining sellers dramatically more efficient, and it will likely absorb a lot of SMB/low-complexity selling through chat-based experiences. The enterprise side still needs relationship, orchestration, and high-stakes decision navigation. Even that gets reshaped when AI can do the heavy lifting of research, mapping imperatives, and crafting strategic alignment.
The AI Impact: Whether you’re hiring recruiters, AEs, or leaders, the bar is shifting. The winning teams will be the ones that build modern processes and train humans to do what humans do best.
The “Stare Down the Bull” moment
When I asked Shaun for his “stare down the bull” moment, his answer was consistent with everything he stands for: standing up for candidates who deserve a shot, especially when decision-makers hide behind checkboxes or insecurity.
He said those moments happen constantly, and the way through them is clarity: criteria, data points, and the willingness to have the uncomfortable conversations.
That’s the thread of this entire episode: hiring doesn’t get better through more steps. It gets better through better thinking and more courage.
FAQ
What’s the biggest problem with hiring today (especially in sales)?
The biggest problem isn’t rejection, it’s wasted time: overly long processes, unclear criteria, and poor communication (including ghosting), which damages employer brand and loses great candidates.
Are sales assessments helpful or harmful?
They can be helpful when used as conversation starters and fit indicators, not as a pass/fail gate. The value is in uncovering mismatch early (hunter vs. farmer, AE vs. AM archetype) before it becomes a performance issue.
What should startups fix before hiring “a great salesperson”?
Startups should clarify fundamentals: ICP, positioning, marketing support, tools, and realistic compensation expectations. Hiring a top seller without the conditions for selling often leads to expensive mis-hires and stalled growth.
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