Hey folks - Firas here.
This week’s PMF Playbook comes from my episode with Joseph Doyle, Director of Recruiting at Harness. Joe has built teams through multiple market cycles - pre-AI hiring booms, post-pandemic resets, and now the full acceleration of AI across every function in tech.
What made this conversation unusually valuable wasn’t a single recruiting tactic. It was the way AI, hiring philosophy, interview discipline, and emotional intelligence all tied into one continuous PMF story.
Because here’s the truth most founders underestimate:
The quality of your recruiting system shapes the quality of your people.
The quality of your people shapes the quality of your product.
And the quality of your product determines whether you ever reach real PMF.
You can’t separate them.
Let me walk you through what stood out.
The AI lens: efficiency is the surface, leverage is the shift
Joe was honest about where AI is today inside recruiting.
On the surface, the gains are obvious:
● Job descriptions now take minutes
● Outreach writing is faster
● Framework thinking is easier
● Scheduling and sourcing are increasingly automated
The low-hanging fruit is real.
But the deeper shift isn’t speed - it’s reallocation.
If recruiters spend less time manually cranking administrative flywheels, they gain more time to:
● deepen candidate relationships
● understand timing and motivation
● coach hiring managers
● improve candidate experience
● refine role definition
That changes the nature of the function.
The PMF lesson buried in that shift is simple:
When AI removes the busywork, it exposes whether your team was strategic or mechanical.
Recruiting becomes less about process management and more about judgment.
And in competitive markets, judgment compounds.
The capacity shift: recruiters will carry more weight
Historically, recruiting scaled linearly.
More headcount plan → more recruiters.
AI changes that math.
Joe pointed out something subtle but important: recruiter capacity is likely to expand. Each recruiter may be responsible for more hires, more process oversight, and more stakeholder enablement.
That forces a skill upgrade.
The recruiter of the future becomes:
● systems-oriented
● process-design focused
● data-aware
● internally consultative
● externally relationship-driven
In other words, recruiting shifts closer to product thinking.
The PMF takeaway:
If recruiting becomes more leveraged, the cost of a weak recruiting function increases.
The companies that treat recruiting as a strategic lever will build stronger teams and stronger teams win markets.
The talent war in the AI era: clarity beats compensation
We discussed the obvious reality: AI talent is aggressively pursued. Some engineers are fielding offers in the millions.
Most companies can’t compete on raw compensation.
So what’s left?
Joe highlighted a key shift: candidates are asking deeper questions.
Not just:
● “What’s the comp?”
● “What’s the role?”
But:
● “How serious is your AI strategy?”
● “Is leadership actually committed?”
● “How big will this team be?”
● “What’s your trajectory in this space?”
In a noisy market, narrative clarity becomes a competitive advantage.
The PMF lesson:
When markets get competitive, talent doesn’t optimize for salary alone.
They optimize for trajectory.
If your strategy is fuzzy, great candidates will sense it immediately.
Growth mindset in the AI era: loop speed matters
Joe described the growth mindset as a “mind in motion.”
In the AI era, that motion accelerates.
Engineers can:
● close learning loops faster
● iterate faster
● prototype faster
● debug faster
● test hypotheses faster
That means a growth mindset is no longer an abstract curiosity.
It’s curiosity + iteration speed.
And that changes hiring.
Joe emphasized the importance of first principles thinking over narrow tool matching. Tools evolve quickly. Foundations endure.
The PMF implication:
When platforms shift, hiring for tools becomes obsolete.
Hiring for reasoning and adaptability becomes essential.
Recruiting will evolve but it won’t disappear
We addressed the existential question: will recruiters be replaced?
Joe’s view was pragmatic.
Recruiting will exist but its definition will change.
Automation will handle:
● coordination
● early filtering
● documentation
● parts of sourcing
Humans will still handle:
● reading nuance
● managing expectations
● coaching hiring managers
● navigating sensitive conversations
● building trust
Because hiring is not purely mechanical.
It’s emotional.
And that brings us to the next lens.
EQ: the differentiator AI can’t easily replicate
Joe made an important point: you can remove friction from a process without removing humanity.
In fact, you should.
Automate the annoying parts.
But surgically inject EQ where it matters.
Candidates remember:
● how they were treated
● how transparent the company was
● how fast decisions were made
● whether the process felt respectful
In commoditized talent markets, experience is differentiation.
The PMF lesson:
As automation increases, genuine human connection becomes a competitive edge.
Interview design: hire for potential, not proof
This was one of the strongest themes of the conversation.
Joe referenced a common mistake: companies say they hire for potential, but design interview loops to hire for proof.
Proof-based hiring sounds like:
● “Have you done this exact thing before?”
● “Solve this exact problem under pressure.”
● “Match the pattern we recognize.”
Potential-based hiring looks at:
● learning speed
● reasoning ability
● curiosity
● adaptability
● motivation
And here’s the uncomfortable reality Joe surfaced:
When you hire only for proof, you often attract people already ready to leave the level you’re hiring for.
When you hire for potential, you attract people who can grow inside your company.
That matters enormously for PMF.
Because early PMF requires elasticity.
Scaling PMF requires internal growth.
Rigid hiring creates rigid teams.
Process discipline: plan before you recruit
Joe was clear on something operational but powerful.
Too many companies start recruiting before defining:
● what good looks like
● who owns each decision
● how the loop is structured
● what signals matter
● what timeline is acceptable
The result? Delays, confusion, lost candidates.
Strong recruiting loops behave like projects:
● clear criteria
● clear stages
● clear ownership
● fast feedback cycles
The PMF lesson:
Candidate experience is not perks and swag.
It’s operational discipline.
And discipline accelerates momentum.
Take-homes and over-interviewing: friction filters the wrong way
Joe’s view on take-homes was nuanced.
Short, time-boxed, experiential exercises that replace heavier loops?
Potentially useful.
Long, unpaid projects as gatekeepers?
A great way to lose top-tier talent.
He also raised an important philosophical question:
If your process begins with heavy friction, who are you selecting for?
Often, desperation not excellence.
And that misalignment shows up later.
The PMF lesson:
Your interview process is a filter.
Design it intentionally.
The broader shift: more builders, more companies, more noise
Joe also touched on something bigger.
AI lowers the barrier to building.
Citizen developers can create things that previously required full engineering teams.
This may lead to:
● more small companies
● more experimentation
● more niche products
● faster iteration cycles
In that world, speed increases and advantage windows shrink.
Which means hiring becomes even more important.
Because if building is easier, differentiation shifts to:
● insight
● team quality
● execution discipline
The real takeaway: PMF is downstream of hiring quality
If I compress the episode into one sentence, it’s this:
AI will compress recruiting workflows, but the companies that win will be the ones that hire for potential, design disciplined processes, and preserve human connection inside an increasingly automated world.
You cannot separate PMF from people.
You cannot separate people from process.
And you cannot separate process from leadership intent.
Great products are built by great teams.
Great teams are built through deliberate hiring systems.
And deliberate systems don’t happen by accident.
Until next time,
Firas Sozan
Your Cloud, Data & AI Search & Venture Partner
Find me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/firassozan/
Personal website: https://firassozan.com/
Company website: https://www.harrisonclarke.com/
Venture capital fund: https://harrisonclarkeventures.com/
‘Inside the Silicon Mind’ podcast: https://insidethesiliconmind.com/