Business Owners Radio · Craig Moen & Shye Gilad | Business Owners | Entrepreneurship | Small Business

STRATEGY | How to hire better people faster. w/Dave Collins.

·33 min·1 clip

The oak breaks under pressure; the reeds bend and bounce back—which are you building?

Dave Collins is the guest. He joins Craig Moen and Shai Gilad to talk through cultural fit, bias, and interviews, plus the habits that quietly shape who gets brought into a business. Oak & Reeds frames the work. Collins says he founded the firm seven years ago after bringing together strategy consulting, change management, leadership skills, and improv comedy into one training practice. The show keeps coming back to hiring. Rather than treating interviews as casual conversations, he argues for structure, training, and clear rubrics so managers are judging the same skills instead of following a hunch. Similarity bias matters. He points out that interviewers often prefer candidates who feel familiar, and he says a more structured process can interrupt that reflex before it turns into a hiring mistake. Diversity comes up next. With defined questions and expectations, candidates from different backgrounds are less likely to get screened out by hidden assumptions or forced to guess what a right answer is supposed to sound like. Culture fit gets challenged. Collins says that phrase can become a trap, while values fit keeps the interview tied to what the organization actually needs from a teammate, a leader, or a problem solver. The language stays plain. He returns to practical markers like collaboration, leadership, dealing with uncertainty, and trust, showing how the interview should test the work, not the polish. Training is part of it. He notes that companies get better outcomes when interviewers are taught how to run the process, because structure only helps if people know how to use it. The tone stays steady. Craig and Shai give Collins room to build the case step by step, which lets the episode move from bias to systems to operating discipline without rushing. It ends on execution. By the close, the conversation treats hiring as a repeatable business practice rather than a personality contest, which makes it useful for owners who want better outcomes without relying on gut feel.

As heard by us

A practical case for structured interviews, less bias, and values-first hiring.

Business Owners Radio Episode 225 keeps its focus on practical hiring advice, with Dave Collins, founder and CEO of Oak & Reeds, laying out a plain case for structure over instinct.

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Why you'd press play

If interviews keep rewarding polish over signal, this gives you a sturdier way to hire with less guesswork and fewer bias traps.

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