Most hiring decisions don't fail immediately. The candidate checks out. The process is clean. The client signs off. And then something small goes sideways — sometimes eight months later.

Darren Tompkins runs a multi-division recruiting firm with no debt, no office, and no outside capital, placing people into engineering, construction, and data-center projects where a wrong read has consequences on both sides. This conversation is about what it actually costs to make judgment calls about people for a living — and what happens when the placement that looked clean turned out it wasn't.

Darren Tompkins — Vader-Rey

Companies vaderrey.com

LinkedIn: Darren Tompkins

If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.

Chapters
00:00 — When decisions start to stack
00:30 — What the day actually looks like

00:45 — Why you can't turn it off

01:16 — When a placement goes wrong

02:11 — High-stakes hiring decisions

03:20 — Army vs business pressure

05:26 — What looks easier than it is

06:32 — When hiring decisions fail

09:02 — A different kind of hard

10:39 — Building without debt

12:59 — Slow seasons and pressure cycles

14:54 — When the work doesn't stop

16:46 — AI and hiring decisions

21:06 — Losing a client

23:18 — Where to connect

Most leadership mistakes don’t look like mistakes in the moment.

They feel necessary.

In this conversation, Laurent Cohen reflects on what happens when hiring decisions speed up under pressure — and how intuition gets quietly overridden as momentum builds.

Drawing from 30+ years of building companies across Europe, the U.S., and Israel, he describes how judgment narrows, why teams stop pushing back, and how leaders end up fixing decisions that once felt completely right.

This episode isn’t about hiring frameworks.
It’s about what changes internally — before anything breaks.

Learn more about GetOblic
https://getoblic.com

If you’ve had to fix decisions that felt right at the time → https://joesteele.com

Chapters
00:00 — The decision that didn’t feel wrong (cold open)
00:11 — Where expensive decisions actually hide
00:40 — When hiring starts to speed up
02:01 — Why trust, not technology, becomes the constraint
03:00 — The shift toward problem solvers
04:11 — Confusing speed with clarity
05:18 — When the cost hasn’t shown up yet
05:57 — Measuring performance vs reading people
06:35 — How AI is changing the workforce
07:35 — The mistake of treating employees like family
08:48 — Why everything is one-on-one
09:34 — Daily signals and control
10:08 — Open access and no barriers
10:29 — Why intuition still drives hiring
12:26 — Reading body language over listening
13:23 — Knowing in the first 15 minutes
14:06 — When a hire looks right but isn’t
15:44 — What’s missing matters more than what’s said
16:08 — Getting locked into decisions
17:30 — Protecting time for your team
18:29 — Expanding across cultures
20:01 — Why in-office matters
20:33 — When to stop second guessing
22:00 — Building something that actually becomes a business
24:28 — The decisions that feel finished

Decision State explores how leadership judgment changes under sustained responsibility — often before results reflect it.

Most senior leaders don’t burn out dramatically.
Performance continues. Teams deliver. Outcomes hold.

But decision quality can quietly shift.

This show looks at how pressure influences clarity, timing, interpretation, and risk assessment over time — especially in demanding seasons where responsibility doesn’t reset.

Through conversations with founders, operators, and experienced leaders, Decision State examines patterns most people recognize but rarely name.

This isn’t a wellness podcast.
It’s not productivity advice.
And it isn’t performance coaching.

It’s a lens on decision-making under pressure — and why recognizing subtle shifts early protects long-term leadership quality.

If this resonates, Decision State is also delivered as a private executive briefing:

How Pressure Changes Judgment — Before It Shows in Results.