How we pick guides (and fire them)

We interview six candidates per city. We keep maybe one. Here are the questions that do the actual filtering — and the two that never work.

The question that works best sounds almost rude: "Tell me about a time a guest was wrong about what they wanted, and you didn't correct them until it was too late." The guides who are worth something pause. They have an answer. The guides who aren't worth something give you the answer from a hospitality training manual.

The question we stopped asking: "What's your favourite thing about this city?" Everybody has a good answer. It tells you nothing except that they like where they live, which is table stakes.

The second question we stopped asking: "How do you handle difficult guests?" Again — trained answer. What we ask instead: "Tell me about a guest you genuinely didn't like." The answer to that one is illuminating in ways you can't fake.