This caught my eye because a number of years ago I read a good book called "First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently" which detailed the results of a survey of 80000 managers (performed by the Gallup organization), in which a main conclusion was the point that "people never change". So, when hiring people, you should expect that people will continue to behave as they have in the past.<p>This may seem obvious, but I've seen that a hiring manager will often hire a candidate with an unsuccessful record on the believe that, for the first time in the candidate's career, he/she will be successful in the new organization, (yes, I've done this myself also), only to be disappointed later. In fact, this pattern is really very common in my experience.