Tarot for hiring and teams: examine the role without judging the candidate

Tarot for hiring and teams is only defensible when it is used to examine the role, the manager’s assumptions and the design of the hiring process—not the applicant. Cards cannot establish competence, integrity, “team fit,” future performance or a hidden personality. A hiring decision needs job-related criteria, comparable questions, work evidence, documented scoring and the legal requirements that apply where the organisation operates. The useful output of a spread is therefore modest: one vague expectation rewritten as observable behaviour, one stronger interview question, a definition of acceptable evidence and a date when the team will review whether its process improved.

I once drafted a spread around the question, “What kind of person does this team need?” The Emperor and King of Swords appeared, and the conversation quickly became a portrait of a decisive, hard-edged, highly rational leader. It sounded coherent. It also told us almost nothing about the work. Since then I have turned the deck away from the individual. I do not ask whether a candidate is reliable; I ask what evidence of reliability is genuinely relevant to this role and how every applicant will have an equal chance to provide it.

Put the cards on the role, not the applicant

The boundary is strict. Tarot may help a hiring team notice an undefined expectation, a conflict over authority or an onboarding gap. It must not become an unannounced personality assessment.

Consent does not turn divination into a valid employment criterion. If a team privately uses cards for reflection, it should exclude applicant names and personal data, keep the reading out of evaluation records and make sure it has no influence on the decision.

Define the role problem before drawing

Vacancies often begin with adjectives: “senior,” “proactive,” “resilient,” “a natural leader,” “a culture fit.” Those words feel specific until five interviewers explain them five different ways. Before taking a card, write down:

1. What result is currently missing without this role?
2. Which responsibilities belong to the new employee, the manager and the existing team?
3. Which decisions may the role make independently?
4. Which skills are required on entry, and which can be learned?
5. What constraints are real: time, budget, workload or working arrangement?
6. What evidence will be assessed in the same way for every applicant?
7. Who decides, and how will conflicting scores be resolved?

Translate each adjective into behaviour.

This exercise may solve most of the problem before a spread is needed. Cards are useful only for the contradiction the team still cannot see.

An eight-position spread for the role and hiring process

Do not name a specific applicant or place a CV beside the deck. A sound question is: “What must we clarify in the technical-lead role so that people are assessed through job-related evidence?”

1. The role problem. Which result or tension must the position address?
2. The manager’s expectation. What feels obvious to one person but remains unstated?
3. The critical competence. Which work behaviour actually matters?
4. The evidence. What example, artefact or action could demonstrate it?
5. The process risk. Where might similarity, first impressions or a double standard distort judgement?
6. The team agreement. What must be decided before anyone joins?
7. The onboarding gap. What support cannot reasonably be left to the newcomer?
8. The small change. What will you revise in the advert or interview, and when will you review it?

Record at least two interpretations. Both must lead to questions and evidence, never to a label attached to a person.

Save the role definition and hypotheses in Reflecta

Worked example: hiring a technical lead

Composite case: a product team of seven developers is hiring a technical lead. Releases slip, decisions after incidents remain verbal, and product and engineering repeatedly clash over priorities. The manager says the team needs “a strong leader with ownership,” yet cannot explain which authority the new person will hold.

The team records these facts first:

• the role has no direct people-management responsibility;
• it owns technical decisions, change quality and incident reviews;
• three senior people currently make architecture decisions without a shared method;
• mentoring is expected, but no time has been allocated for it;
• different interviewers ask different questions and use no common scoring guide.

Imagine the cards are:

1. role problem — Eight of Pentacles;
2. manager expectation — The Emperor;
3. critical competence — Three of Pentacles;
4. evidence — Justice;
5. process risk — The Moon;
6. team agreement — Five of Wands;
7. onboarding gap — Page of Pentacles;
8. small change — Six of Swords.

Interpretation one: the role needs disciplined decisions, not a dominant personality

Eight of Pentacles points toward repeatable quality: a definition of done, engineering practices and learning after mistakes. The Emperor makes the expectation of order and authority visible. Three of Pentacles, however, shifts the emphasis from solo control to shared expertise. Justice asks for evidence. An applicant should not merely say, “I bring order”; they should walk through a real decision, the criteria used and the consequences.

The Moon in the risk position says nothing about an applicant being secretive. It highlights fog in the process itself. Each interviewer may see what they already expected. Five of Wands describes an unresolved internal argument over who has the final say. Page of Pentacles reminds the team that a new hire needs access to context, decision history and time to learn the system.

Interpretation two: the vacancy is covering an old authority conflict

The same cards can tell a different story. The Emperor with Five of Wands may show a manager hoping to hire someone who will stop disagreement without changing decision rules. Even an experienced lead would then be trapped between incompatible expectations. Eight of Pentacles suggests a working system rather than a heroic individual. Six of Swords supports a transition: for one month, keep a decision log and assign explicit ownership for different types of technical choice.

How do you choose between the interpretations? Not with another card. Ask whether the team can write and agree the role’s mandate before publishing the vacancy. If it cannot, the primary hiring risk is organisational.

Turn hypotheses into questions and evidence

Every insight should pass through four steps: hypothesis → interview question → evidence → common scoring rule.

Comparable questions do not require a robotic interview. Follow-ups are allowed, but the baseline criteria, time and scoring method should be consistent.

Onboarding starts before the offer

A reading can appear to expose a candidate weakness when the real gap is the absence of a joining plan. Before hiring, document:

• the purpose of the role in the first review period;
• the decisions the employee may make;
• who provides context, access and introductions;
• the cadence of feedback;
• how technical and interpersonal disagreements are handled;
• the sign that onboarding is progressing adequately;
• the date when expectations will be revisited.

Expecting a newcomer to repair accumulated problems immediately, while withholding authority, time and information, is not a test of character. It is a system defect.

Non-discrimination and legal boundaries

Do not use cards to infer age, sex, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, health, pregnancy, family status, nationality, appearance or any other protected or non-job-related characteristic. Do not attempt to “see” plans for children, emotional stability, a diagnosis, political views or private relationships.

Use this process check:

• each criterion maps to an actual task of the role;
• each applicant receives comparable core questions;
• scores are supported by an example, work sample or documented answer;
• access needs and reasonable adjustments are handled without divinatory assumptions;
• personal data is collected only where necessary;
• disputed requirements are reviewed with qualified HR or legal support under applicable law;
• the final decision can be explained without mentioning cards, intuition or “culture fit.”

It is usually more precise to discuss working agreements and contribution than “culture fit,” which can hide a preference for people who resemble the existing team.

A small protocol before the first interview round

1. Run the spread only on the role and process.
2. Write two alternative hypotheses.
3. Turn each into one job-related question.
4. Define strong, partial and insufficient evidence in advance.
5. Remove anything about private personality or protected characteristics.
6. Agree the criteria with every interviewer.
7. After the first round, compare scoring differences—not applicants through cards.
8. Review again after the person has joined: which part of the role description was accurate, and which needs rewriting?

A completed record might read:

• Hypothesis: We say “strong leader,” but we actually need a reliable decision process.
• Action: Rewrite the advert and add two structured questions.
• Criterion: Interviewers use the same three competences and can cite concrete answers.
• Review date: After the first complete interview round.
• Real event: Where did scores diverge, and what evidence was missing?

Open a spread and save the review criteria in Reflecta

Common mistakes

Reading on every applicant. This creates the illusion of extra information while amplifying the team’s existing impressions.

Treating court cards as personality types. King of Swords does not prove rationality, and Queen of Cups does not establish empathy in a real person.

Changing the bar for a favourite applicant. Warmth and rapport may matter to the conversation, but the professional criteria should remain shared.

Repeating a spread to justify a preference. A second symbolic answer does not turn an inclination into evidence.

Ignoring the team and onboarding. Relevant experience cannot compensate for an undefined mandate and conflicting expectations.

Frequently asked questions

Can tarot show which applicant is best for the job?

No. People should be compared through pre-defined, job-related evidence. Cards may help improve the criteria, but they cannot rank applicants.

Can we ask about someone’s “compatibility” with the team?

Break compatibility into observable conditions: feedback style, decision-making, expected autonomy and conflict handling. Without criteria, “fit” often means personal similarity.

What if a card makes me uneasy about an applicant?

Do not transfer the feeling into the score. Name the precise work risk you think it represents and test that risk with the same professional question for everyone. If the concern cannot be stated without a mystical label, it does not belong in the decision.

Should applicants be told that the team used a spread?

A private team reflection that excludes applicant data still must not influence evaluation. Turning a person into the subject of a reading or placing the result inside the hiring process is inappropriate even when presented as an unconventional method.

When should the notes be reviewed?

After the first interview round and again after the employee’s first review period. Compare the quality of the role definition, questions, evidence and onboarding—not whether the cards “came true.”

Tarot for hiring and teams has value only when it removes fog from the process rather than adding a secret criterion to a person. Move attention from the applicant’s supposed nature to the role problem, observable behaviour, evidence and working conditions. Make one change, agree the criterion and test it in a real hiring stage. If a decision cannot be justified without the cards, it is not sufficiently justified.

Examine the role and hiring process in Reflecta

— Daniel Aster, official Reflecta author