Meet David Lee Jensen

He learned to read people before he learned to read books.

When David Lee Jensen was seven years old, he learned to read people. Not from a textbook. Not in a classroom. From survival.

Growing up in Boston with an abusive stepfather, David learned something most people never have to: how to walk into a room and know — instantly — whether the person in it was safe. Whether the smile was real or a mask. Whether the calm was genuine or the silence before something broke.

That instinct saved him as a kid. He didn't know it then, but it would become the foundation of his entire career.

Portrait Photo

The Journey

The HR Years

After studying at Northeastern University, David moved to Los Angeles and spent nearly a decade in human resources — headhunting, recruiting, building teams from scratch. He got good at it. Unusually good. While other recruiters relied on resumes and gut feelings, David was doing something different: he was reading people the way he'd learned to as a child. Not what they said. What they meant. Not what they presented. Who they were.

The Executive Suite

That ability took him from HR into the executive suite. As President of a national merchant services company, he built a sales organization that grew to over $2.5 billion before leading an industry-recognized exit. He founded multiple companies. Some failed. The ones that succeeded had one thing in common: he hired the right people.

The Book

After two decades of watching business owners — smart, driven, capable people — torpedo their own companies with bad hires, David wrote The Naked Interview: Hiring Without Regret. The book became an Amazon bestseller. Not because it was academic. Because it was honest. It laid bare the ten mistakes business owners make when hiring and gave them a system to stop making them.

The Academy

That's why he built The Hiring Academy. Because hiring is the one thing every business does — and almost nobody does well. Whether you're a franchise owner interviewing your first manager, a CEO scaling a team of fifty, or an HR leader who inherited a broken process, the problem is the same: the wrong person in the wrong seat will cost you everything. Time. Money. Morale. Momentum.

Trusted By

Don't take our word for it.

25+ years

hiring expertise

50,000+

people trained

Amazon

bestseller

Apple, Intuit, NetApp

keynote stages

"This dude has codified the perfect interview."

Grant Cardone

10X Rule · Billionaire

"David Lee Jensen is absolutely The Hiring Guru."

Arianna Huffington

Huffington Post

"Hiring sucks. David shares some pretty smart stuff."

Joe Polish

Genius Network

"Cheers to David, he nailed hiring with no fluff."

Steve D. Sims

Real Life Wizard of Oz

His Philosophy

Hiring is a character judgment problem.

Most hiring advice starts with job descriptions and interview questions. David starts somewhere different: the ability to see people for who they really are.

His 10-phase system doesn't rely on a single interview or a gut feeling. It creates enough touchpoints — phone screens, structured interviews, personality assessments, supervisor callbacks, reference verification — that the mask can't hold. The truth surfaces. Every time.

If you learn to see people for who they really are — not who they present themselves as — you will never make a bad hire again.

Hiring is a character judgment problem, not a skills problem.

The first interview shows who they want you to see. The second shows who they are.

Your gut is a question, not an answer — verify the instinct with a system.

Diligence over desperation. The cost of rushing always exceeds the cost of waiting.

On Stage & On Air

Keynotes delivered at

Apple Intuit NetApp NFL Microsoft McDonald's

Speaking Photo

Sharing stages with the best.

David has delivered keynotes at Fortune 500 companies and shared stages with Richard Branson, Grant Cardone, Les Brown, and Steve Forbes. His audiences range from Silicon Valley teams to US Armed Forces bases to rooms of business owners who just need to stop making bad hires.

He's been featured as a HuffPost contributor under the column "The Hiring Guru" and has appeared on podcasts reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners.

Podcast appearances

SharkPreneur with Kevin Harrington

Dropping Bombs with Brad Lea

Unbreakable with Thom Shea

Transform Your Workplace with Xenium HR

Personal Photo

David lives in Clearwater, Florida, with his wife of over 33 years. They have two sons.

When he's not teaching people how to hire, he coaches high school basketball — because building a winning team, it turns out, works the same way whether you're on a court or in a conference room.

Pricing

Why risk your business on a smile and a handshake?

Be diligent, not desperate. Great hires increase profits.

Every Bad Hire Starts with a Bad Interview
Learn 10 Proven Truths

The Naked Interview is the foundation The Hiring Academy is built on. It lays out a 10-phase hiring sequence — from questioning whether you need the hire at all, to phone screens that expose what resumes hide, to the second interview where the real personality shows up. Written for the owner who is the HR department.

"If you learn to see people for who they really are — not who they present themselves as — you will never make a bad hire again."

Get the Book