Hire to hybridise, not to specialise
This week Expansión published two things that, put together, make a whole thesis: salaries are set to rise 3% on average in 2027, pushed by boomer retirements and a shortage of talent, and at the same time Spain is living a strange paradox where there are few vacancies but a huge shortage of useful profiles.
Translated into operator language: it isn't people that are missing, it's people who can combine things. Technical skill plus judgement. AI plus human judgement. Execution plus business sense.
My play for the coming months: stop hiring by vertical ("I want a growth person", "I want a data person", "I want an ops person") and start hiring by combination ("I want someone who can build AI automations and also understands how a salesperson sells").
The hybrid profile is harder to find, but delivers three times over. And on top of that they're harder to poach, because the market is still looking in separate little boxes.
If your next hire fits cleanly into a traditional job description, you're probably making the wrong hire.
What I learned
I've been chewing on an uncomfortable idea for a while: scaling a team fast isn't a win, it's a mortgage.
Every person who joins adds capacity, yes, but they also add coordination, internal politics, expectations of salary growth, and a silent risk that in twelve months they'll be worth double on the market.
My view today is that a small team of hybrid profiles with AI leverage delivers more than a big team of specialists. Not because some guru says so, but because the numbers are starting to point there: fewer people, more output per head, less fragility when someone gets poached.
The vulnerable part: it's easier to write than to execute. When things are going well, the temptation to hire fast is enormous. And you almost always pay for it six months later.
On the radar
- Car leasing hits a record 26% share, but with fewer Chinese cars than expected. The narrative of the Chinese sweep was moving faster than the actual consumer. Careful about taking trends as given before they happen.
- Madrid launches "Madrid Beats" to sell its lifestyle across 30 cities and 13 countries. Cities now position themselves as brands. If a capital does global branding, you have zero excuse not to do it for your company.
- Telecommunications Yearbook 2026: the sector is reordering and consolidating. Every time a sector consolidates, a gap opens at the top for the small, agile player. Always.
- Salaries forecast to rise 3% in 2027 to retain talent. Three per cent retains nobody. What retains people is the project, the challenge and the feeling that they're learning. Money is only the floor.
The actionable advice
This week, take the three most important people in your company (or your three key suppliers if you work alone) and ask them one very specific question: "What would have to change here for you to still want to be here a year from now?" No preamble, no survey, face to face.
Two things will happen. One: they'll tell you something you didn't know. Two: the simple act of asking already raises the odds that they stay. Retention starts with conversations most founders never have because they're afraid of the answer.
Behind VIVIO
In influencer marketing something similar happens to what we were saying about talent: the cost of retaining a top creator who already works for your brand is far lower than discovering a new one from scratch and praying they convert.
My view building VIVIO is that the real value of a platform in this sector isn't only in the initial brand-creator matching, but in the layer of data and repetition that lets you know which creator to keep activating and which to drop without sentimentality.
Put another way: the first collaboration is marketing, the fifth is already a system. And that's where the real money is made, for the brand and for the creator alike.
This is a version of what I send every week, unfiltered, in my newsletter "Eso no fue suerte". If you want the rest, subscribe for free.