—
Interview a third of the queue and hire no one. Note only the best of them — your benchmark. Then appoint the very next applicant who clears it. That single instruction is the whole strategy, and it is provably the best you can do.
Look too little and you leap before the strong candidates arrive. Look too long and the best has already walked out the door. The two failures balance at exactly one part in e — 0.3679 — where the win rate crests near thirty-seven per cent.
It holds for four applicants or four thousand; the fraction never moves.
Flats viewed once and gone. A single parking bay on a filling street. The apartment, the offer, the person — any queue you meet in order, judge on the spot, and can never revisit obeys the same arithmetic of patience.
Calibrate, then commit.