The best engineers I’ve hired didn’t just code fast—they thought fast. They asked the best questions. They had GitHub repos of protocols they didn’t work on. They poked at assumptions. They cared about what we were building more than we even realized at the time. That’s curiosity—and it’s the most underrated hiring signal in tech.

Every founder knows this intuitively, but most hiring processes systematically miss it. Technical teams default to evaluating what someone knows rather than how they learn. They optimize for current skills over learning velocity. They mistake years of experience for adaptability.

Meanwhile, your startup needs people who can evolve as fast as your product requirements. The engineer who mastered React in 2020 but hasn't explored modern frameworks isn't just behind—they're actively slowing down your development cycles. The difference between engineers who accelerate your team and those who anchor it isn't technical competence. It's intellectual curiosity.

Harvard's Francesca Gino surveyed 3,000 employees about workplace curiosity. She found that 92% of workers believe their most curious colleagues are also the most satisfied, motivated, innovative, and high-performing.¹ When researchers measured different types of curiosity in employees, they discovered that more curious people consistently reported higher job satisfaction, better work engagement, and greater innovation—exactly the outcomes that determine whether someone accelerates or anchors your team.

In fast-evolving technology landscapes, yesterday's expertise becomes tomorrow's technical debt. Curious engineers approach new technologies with systematic learning methods, question architectural assumptions, and synthesize insights from adjacent domains.

Since joining Lazer Technologies as Head of Crypto Recruiting, I've found the strongest hires to be those who showed me a history of tinkering, building on the side, and learning about what's going on in web3. At Rodeo.club, when hiring for a senior backend engineer, I sourced a candidate who on paper looked well-rounded and solid, but through our initial conversations showed they were playing and exploring Farcaster Protocol in their free time, curious about how we would have explored building on that, frames, etc. This showed me not only were they curious but they were curious if we as a company were as well. They resulted in being a 10x hire for the engineering team.

Technical teams over-index on current skills, but growing startups need people who can rapidly acquire new ones. The uncomfortable truth is that candidates need to understand their value isn't just their hard skills anymore. It's their soft skills and their willingness to truly clock in and understand the space they're operating in so they can be genuinely impactful. The engineer who knows Solidity but doesn't understand tokenomics, DeFi mechanics, or why decentralization matters will write technically correct code that misses the point entirely.

Here's what most founders miss: people who don't show genuine curiosity about your company, your space, your industry will not lean in the way you need them to. They'll clock in, write code, and clock out. But they won't stay up reading your competitors' technical blogs. They won't experiment with adjacent protocols in their spare time. They won't push back when a product requirement doesn't make technical sense.

As AI becomes a bigger and more prevalent tool for productivity by the day, technical skills—while still critical—are being overshadowed by soft skills like critical thinking and curiosity. You need people who want to learn how to solve problems, not just someone with an existing manual. ChatGPT can write boilerplate code, but it can't question whether you're building the right thing in the first place.

Skip generic questions about interest in your company and instead probe for curiosity architecture:

Questions that reveal learning patterns:

• "Walk me through how your understanding of [relevant technology] has evolved over the past year"

• "Tell me about something technical you built that nobody asked you to build"

• "What's something outside your current role that you're genuinely excited to understand better?"

Due diligence on their exploration:

• GitHub contributions to interesting projects (not just work repositories)

• Technical blog posts or documentation they've written

• Evidence of tinkering with new tools/frameworks in personal time

• Questions they ask you about your technical challenges or architecture

Green flags: Specific examples of independent learning, systematic approach to skill acquisition, thoughtful questions about your technical trade-offs

Red flags: Generic enthusiasm, no evidence of personal technical exploration, inability to articulate how their thinking has evolved

Between formal interview rounds, curious candidates don't wait passively. Schedule brief check-in calls to gauge continued engagement:

What genuine curiosity looks like:

• They've dug deeper into your technical documentation or codebase

• They bring new questions based on continued investigation

• They reference recent blog posts, talks, or technical decisions from your team

• They share relevant insights from their own continued learning

Energy pattern recognition:

• Declining curiosity: Each conversation feels repetitive, questions become generic

• Sustained curiosity: Each touchpoint reveals deeper understanding and more sophisticated questions

• Accelerating curiosity: They're making connections you hadn't considered, bringing external insights

Replace traditional whiteboard coding with collaborative technical assessments where candidates work directly with your engineers:

Structure collaborative sessions around:

• Code review of an existing feature with discussion of improvements

• Architectural planning for a new component with your team

• Debugging session on a real (but contained) technical challenge

What to observe:

• Inquisitive engagement: Do they ask clarifying questions about requirements, constraints, and context?

• Learning orientation: When they encounter unfamiliar patterns, do they ask thoughtful questions or make assumptions?

• Collaborative curiosity: Do they build on your team's ideas while contributing their own insights?

The best technical hires use these sessions to learn about your system while demonstrating their thinking process. They're curious about your architectural decisions, interested in understanding constraints, and engaged in collaborative problem-solving rather than just showing off individual technical prowess.

Technical competence is necessary but not sufficient for high-impact hires in fast-moving startups. Curiosity—demonstrated through systematic learning patterns, sustained engagement throughout your interview process, and collaborative technical assessment—is the best predictor of whether someone will accelerate your team's velocity and push your product forward. While technical skills get candidates through the door, intellectual curiosity determines whether they'll thrive in your environment, adapt to rapid changes, and contribute to breakthrough solutions. When you optimize your hiring process to identify genuine curiosity alongside technical ability, you don't just hire better individuals—you build teams that learn faster than market conditions change.

References:

1. Gino, Francesca. "The Business Case for Curiosity." Harvard Business Review, September 1, 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/09/the-business-case-for-curiosity