Good friction
Coined by Aron VeraartFrom: Your Next Applicant Is a Bot: Why Smarter Friction Beats More Filters
Definition
Friction in an application that filters for real interest, like one specific question about the job. Bad friction, like accounts and cover letters, only scares good people away.
Aron VeraartUpdated Every step in an application is friction. The question is what that friction filters for.
Bad friction is effort that doesn't tell you anything about the candidate. Creating an account, writing a cover letter, retyping your CV into fifteen fields. The good, busy people drop out, because they have options. And with AI, it doesn't even stop the mass appliers, because a tool can fill in all of it in seconds. So you lose quality and keep the noise.
Good friction is the opposite. One small, specific moment that's easy for a real, interested person and hard to fake. A question about the actual job. A 30-second voice note. Picking between two real situations from the work and saying why. It takes a genuine candidate a minute, and the answer tells you more than a cover letter ever did.
The goal isn't zero friction. It's the right friction, and as little of the wrong kind as possible, while keeping the whole thing short.
Example
A company hiring dispatchers drops the cover letter and the account, and adds one question: "A driver calls in sick at 6am and there's no backup. What's the first thing you do?" Real dispatchers answer it in two lines and it shows how they think. Generic AI answers stand out right away, because they don't sound like someone who's actually been in that seat.