How to predict who will succeed in your team

People problems are real. They come from tools that manage process but ignore decisions. When you are looking to grow your team, the biggest challenge isn't just finding someone who can do the job on paper; it is the ability to predict who will succeed in your unique culture and team dynamic before they even sign the contract.

Most HR leaders today are buried in transactional work. You are managing the police and policy side of the business, ensuring compliance is met and payroll is correct. While these tasks are essential for reducing process risk, they don't actually help you make better people decisions. In fact, many modern tools make you faster at making bad decisions by prioritising speed over fit.

The cost of a bad hire isn't just the recruitment fee; it is the cultural contagion and lost productivity that follows. To move from being a rule enforcer to a strategic advisor, you need to understand the science behind human variability. By learning how to predict who will succeed, you protect your reputation and ensure your organisation has the capability it needs to perform.

Why resumes fail to predict who will succeed

For decades, the resume has been the gold standard of recruitment. We look at past experience, education, and a list of skills to determine if someone is 'qualified'. However, research shows that nearly 70% of hires fail within the first 18 months. If resumes were actually good at helping us predict who will succeed, that failure rate would be much lower.

The problem is that a resume only manages process risk. it tells you if someone has the technical baseline to perform a task. It does nothing to manage people insight risk. It doesn't tell you how a person handles conflict, what motivates them to go the extra mile, or whether their natural work personality will clash with your existing team. You are essentially hiring a list of bullet points and hoping a human shows up who fits the vibe.

To truly predict success, we have to look deeper than chronological work history. We need to analyse human variability – the predictable patterns of behaviour and motivation that determine how someone actually works when the pressure is on. This is where people intelligence comes in, shifting the focus from what someone has done to how they will do it in your specific environment.

The role of people insight risk in hiring

Your current HR tech likely handles process risk very well. It automates applicant tracking, centralises data, and keeps your records in order. This reduces admin errors, but it doesn't reduce the risk of making the wrong call on a candidate. We call this 'people insight risk'. It is the gap between having data and having clarity.

HR is always in the spotlight. When a 'brilliant jerk' is hired and destroys team morale, or a high-potential recruit leaves after three months, you are often the one who wears the blame. Without science-backed data to defend your decisions, you are left relying on 'gut feel'. But gut feel is just bias in a fancy suit. It isn't a reliable way to predict who will succeed.

At Compono, we believe you shouldn't have to choose between efficiency and intelligence. By using tools that measure work personality and job motivation dimensions, you can reduce people insight risk. For example, Compono Hire is an applicant tracking system (ATS) that handles the admin while giving you real-time rankings based on fit, so you can make defensible decisions backed by behavioural science.

Understanding the eight work actions of success

High-performing teams don't happen by accident. Our research into organisational design has identified eight key work activities that define success: Evaluating, Coordinating, Campaigning, Pioneering, Advising, Helping, and Doing. Every individual has a natural preference for some of these actions and a tendency to avoid others. This is their 'work personality'.

If you want to predict who will succeed, you must first understand the current makeup of your team. Are you a team of 'Pioneers' who are great at big ideas but struggle with follow-through? If so, hiring another visionary won't help. You likely need an 'Auditor' or a 'Doer' to ground those ideas in reality. Success is found in the balance of these preferences.

When you can map these traits, you stop looking for the 'best' candidate in a vacuum and start looking for the best candidate for the team. You can discover your own work personality through Compono to see how these dynamics play out in your own career. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward building a team that is resilient and capable of high performance.

Culture fit is about behaviour, not sentiment

Many organisations try to measure culture through engagement surveys that ask how people feel. While sentiment is important, it is a lagging indicator. It tells you that something is wrong, but not how to fix it. To predict who will succeed, you need to understand the 'unwritten rules' of how work actually gets done – the organisational culture.

Culture problems persist when tools ignore how people work. If your organisation values 'Risk Taking' and 'Individuality', a candidate who thrives in a 'Formal' and 'Risk Avoiding' environment will likely struggle, regardless of their skills. This misalignment is a primary driver of turnover. It isn't that the person is a 'bad' employee; it's that the system is incomplete because it didn't account for this friction.

By assessing candidates against 12 validated dimensions of culture, you can see exactly where the alignment is strong and where it might break down. This allows you to hire people who are predicted to stay and thrive.

The Compono Culture, Engagement & Performance Model shows how this alignment directly influences business results by fostering productive behaviours.

Building capability over completion

Once you have the right people on board, the quest to predict who will succeed continues into their development. Traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS) focus heavily on process risk – tracking completion rates and ticking boxes for compliance. But as we often say at Compono, completion does not equal capability.

A person might finish a training module, but that doesn't mean they have the capability to perform in their role. To truly predict long-term success, training must be mapped to what people actually need to perform based on their work personality and the specific gaps in their team. Capability gaps are often the result of tools that ignore the individual's needs.

When you connect learning to actual performance outcomes, you create a culture of continuous improvement. You are no longer just the 'corporate police' enforcing mandatory training; you become a strategic partner building the organisation's competitive advantage. By understanding the variability of your staff, you can tailor development that actually moves the needle on performance.

Key takeaways for predicting success

• Resumes manage process, not insight: They tell you what someone did, but not how they will work in your specific team.
• Reduce people insight risk: Use behavioural science to make defensible decisions that protect your reputation.
• Map work personalities: High performance comes from balancing different work actions like Evaluating, Doing, and Pioneering.
• Align with culture dimensions: Success is predicted by how well a person's work style matches the organisation's actual work environment.
• Focus on capability: Move beyond completion rates to development that drives real-world results.

Where to from here?

• Explore: Compono Platform
• Talk to an expert: Book in a 15-minute chat to get a walkthrough of Compono.

Frequently asked questions

How can I predict who will succeed in a role?
Predicting success requires moving beyond resumes to assess a candidate's work personality, job motivations, and culture fit. By using science-backed assessments, you can identify behavioural patterns that align with your team's needs and organisational values.

What is people insight risk?
People insight risk is the danger of making wrong people decisions – like hiring the wrong person or mismanaging a team – because you lack clarity on behavioural drivers. Most HR tools only manage process risk (admin/compliance), leaving this strategic risk unaddressed.

Why does culture fit matter for success?
Culture fit determines whether an employee's natural work style aligns with 'the way things are done' in your business. When there is a mismatch, engagement drops and turnover increases, even if the person has the right technical skills.

Is human variability a bad thing in teams?
Not at all! In fact, human variability is a competitive advantage. When you can see and predict these differences, you can build teams with complementary strengths, ensuring all essential work actions (like Coordinating and Helping) are covered.

How does Compono help with hiring decisions?
Compono provides a people intelligence platform that handles both process efficiency and people insight. Our tools, like Compono Hire, use psychometric data to rank candidates based on their likelihood to succeed in your specific role and culture.