Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, July 20, 2026
by Neil Senturia
The process of picking/hiring is really difficult, but here’s how one firm does it
Let’s talk about hiring. Or getting hired.
As I look back on 50 years of deal-making, besides factoring in vast quantities of luck that I had no right to expect, but gratefully and graciously embraced, the other single factor in my successes (and you bet in my failures) was who I hired in the key positions.
It seems obvious, and 7,000 books on Amazon are dedicated to recruiting and hiring. Counterintuitive you think, but if there are that many books, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is hard to do well. As a contrast there are only a few hundred books on how to play championship chess.
But what if you wanted to bend a spoon ….
First, consider The Matrix Philosophy where Neo is told, “Do not try to bend the spoon … realize the truth. There is no spoon, you will see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” The scene suggests that physical constraints and limitations can be overcome when you perceive them merely as illusions. They may be real but the argument of mind over matter prevails. Except if the bus is coming head on.
You may remember Uri Geller. He performed a stage trick where a spoon appears to be deformed by telekinesis. It was a con. But I sat 2 feet away from a magician holding a small metal fork. He never touched the fork and it was never out of my sight, and I now have a fork with a bent tine on my shelf.
Finally, please consider Bending Spoons, the company that you have never heard of. They are headquartered in Milan, far away from Silicon Valley, and recently went public at a market cap of $25 billion. What makes them extraordinary is how they go about hiring employees.
Applications to work there last year topped 800,000. They have a unique system of screening and testing.
Last year 60,000 of those applicants got through the initial screening process, and then that cohort was further whittled down to a mere 3,300 who were granted interviews. Then more rigor, more testing, more algorithms. Finally, they offered jobs to 286 people.
Now think carefully here.
We all say that we do vetting, that we do background checks, that we do due diligence, that we do interviews. And statistics show we get it wrong more than half the time, whether you are hiring a developer, a CEO, a housekeeper or an architect.
The process of picking/hiring is really difficult — which is why there are all those books on the subject.
A Wall Street Journal article on Bending Spoons did a comparison. Last year, Harvard received 48,000 applications and accepted 2,000, an approximate 4% admissions rate. NASA admits 0.1%, Citadel Securities admits 0.36%.
The Bending Spoons hire rate was 0.04%. One hundred times harder than Harvard. The Bending Spoons mantra is the same as everybody else. “We try to spot people who are unusually talented and motivated very early in their careers.”
Wow, there it is. We have just been given the secret to the kingdom. In fact, this sounds like what all companies say.
The “how” Bending does it is the magic sauce. If Julia Child gives you a recipe for beef bourguignon, it still doesn’t mean your beef stew is going to taste the same. Maybe it is her mixing bowl or her stove? Hard to figure.
Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari did offer one clue. “We look at whether the candidate is polite.” I love this one. I have had the same assistant, Nicole, for 34 years, and she has the gift. She knows everything about you the minute you walk in. She is my Morpheus.
A favorite technique for hiring on Wall Street is to take the prospective candidate to dinner.
From the time he/she enters the restaurant until the time he/she gets into the cab, an observant person can learn data points that are never revealed on the resume.
Many years ago, I was a newbie would-be screenwriter in Hollywood. I was invited to a breakfast meeting with a producer at the Beverly Wilshire.
My mother called that morning to give me her advice. “Don’t order a grapefruit, impossible to eat without getting it on your tie.”
Rule 833: Mother knows best.