Publish your hiring bar

Most careers pages tell candidates nothing. "Passionate. Collaborative. Customer-focused." Every firm says it, so nobody can tell whether they'd fit.

Last month our product team turned Propel's five values into 11 behaviours: what a great Propeller actually does on an engagement, written by the people doing the work. They're now live on our careers page, alongside the values they serve and the two things we screen for from the first conversation.

A few that tell you quickly whether you'd fit:

• No permission. A team that waits for a committee costs more than any single bad call.
• Leave them better off. Nothing we hand over should need us to keep it running.
• Sweat the detail. Read every line the AI drafts. The one line it got wrong is the one the client will find.
• Resourcefulness. Smart people who need the process can't work here.

And one non-negotiable: you already use AI in your own work every day. Not in theory, not last quarter.

Why publish them? Three reasons for any leader:

1. A public bar does the screening for you. The wrong candidates rule themselves out before the first interview, and the right ones arrive knowing what you expect.
2. It makes performance and promotion conversations concrete. "Founder's mindset" is a debate. "Did you bring the idea and run it until it shipped?" is a fact.
3. It holds leadership to account. If we don't model these, the team can point to the page. Good.

AI is shifting delivery from doing the work to judging it. The firms that win will be the ones that define good judgement and hire for it. That's the work we do with clients across product strategy, AI and software delivery, and we're holding ourselves to the same standard.

If you read these and think "finally", we'd like to meet you. We hire ahead of need: see our careers page.