You can spend an entire leadership interview discussing the candidate’s career and learn very little about anybody else’s. The promotions are theirs. So are the revenue figures. Before hiring someone to manage your team, it is worth asking what happened to the people they managed before.
What the new research tells us
Research published by PwC on 6 September, conducted by the Social Market Foundation with PwC’s support, examines how first jobs relate to later careers. Its findings connect supportive early working experiences with stronger subsequent outcomes. PwC’s summary reports that greater confidence and readiness for senior work in a first job were associated with around 24 per cent higher later earnings.
That is an association, not a pay rise a good manager can promise. The full report uses a survey of 3,000 UK adults, split between those aged 20 to 25 and 35 to 40. It looks back at respondents’ experiences rather than following the same people over time. The authors explicitly caution against treating the statistical relationships as causal.
There is a methodological detail worth knowing: the 200 qualitative interviews used a purpose trained AI chatbot. Researchers checked a subset of the thematic analysis and all quotations used. These interviews add accounts of people’s experiences; they do not independently prove the earnings relationship.
For a founder, our reading is that developing other people deserves a place in a leadership hiring brief. The study concerns first jobs, not a trial of startup executives. The interview approach below is our practical response to it, not an assessment method tested by the researchers.
Ask for one person, then stay with the example
Start with someone the candidate managed who became capable of work they could not previously do. Ask them to describe that person’s starting point. Were they new to the profession, struggling with a particular task, or ready for responsibility they had not been given?
Then ask what the manager actually did. “I gave them more responsibility” needs a little unpacking. Which responsibility? What support came with it? How did they know when to step in and when to leave the person alone? A useful answer lets you picture the work, including the inconvenient bits.
A promotion is one possible outcome. So is a sales manager learning to coach their own team, or an analyst becoming confident enough to question a forecast. Ask what changed in the person’s work and how the candidate noticed. You are looking for evidence of development, not a list of people who received a new title.
Let candidates anonymise the example. You do not need a former employee’s private performance information, health history or personal circumstances to understand a manager’s contribution.
What makes an answer worth checking?
“I gave my team
more responsibility.”
“We reviewed her forecasts together until she could lead the discussion herself.”
Leave room for a less flattering answer
Next, ask about someone whose development did not go as planned. Perhaps the manager gave feedback too late, mistook confidence for competence or kept taking work back because doing it themselves was quicker.
Listen for a decision they would change. A candidate who can describe their own mistake gives you something to examine. Someone who attributes every difficulty to the employee may need further questioning. Neither answer, on its own, is enough to accept or reject a person.
Context matters here. A manager with a large training budget and established career paths has different options from the first head of operations in a business of twelve people. Ask about the time and resources available, and the help colleagues provided. Do not give the candidate sole credit for another person’s career.
Make it a fair part of the interview
The CIPD recommends structured interviews with consistent questions and assessment criteria. Put the development question into that structure for every candidate for the same role. Agree beforehand what a convincing answer would contain, then write down the evidence before the interview panel discusses it.
An answer such as “my team loved working for me” tells you how the candidate describes their management. A specific account of helping someone take over a difficult responsibility tells you what to investigate. Give candidates time to recall an example and ask follow up questions; this should not become a test of who tells the most polished story.
Where a reference is appropriate, agree it with the candidate and use a relevant referee who is willing to speak. You might ask a former direct report what they became better at while working with this person, and what support made a difference. Do not approach someone’s current team without permission. Our guide to interviewing a senior leader places this alongside work samples and the other evidence a hiring decision needs.
Make sure your business will give them the time
There is little point hiring a thoughtful people manager into a job that leaves no room to manage. If your new marketing leader must personally deliver every campaign, attend every sales call and rewrite every presentation, ask when they will coach their team.
Before the search begins, identify what the existing team should be able to do more independently six months after the hire. That gives the interview a purpose and gives the new manager a reasonable expectation to work towards. It also makes clear where the founder needs to let go.
This belongs in briefs for marketing leadership and operations leadership as much as in a People leadership search. The person you appoint will have their own targets. Part of the job is helping somebody else become capable of meeting theirs.