How Your Hiring Techniques attract Losers

http://blogs.dovetailsoftware.com/blogs/main/archive/2007/12/18/Amateurs_2C00_-Experts-and-Context.aspx

by tracksuitceo • 19 years ago

9 3 19 years ago

blogs.dovetailsoftware.com

This article suggests that as we seek to hire people based on rigid criteria, we simply reinforce the cementing of our own entrenched position. It shows us how to innovate...

apathy• 19 years ago

I was expecting something more interesting than what this article covered. It's for corporate drones, I'm afraid.

If you're starting a company, you'll eventually (inshallah) get to the point where you can't spend the time to interview everyone anymore. And you'll have to rely upon the judgment of your hires, who may or may not have ever interviewed anyone before. I've been there and done that and here are my observations, take them for what they are worth.

To keep your n00b employees from eagerly hiring the first moron that walks in the door -- remind them that they are, with each and every hire, determining the future of the company. Do they want their company to be average, stocked with average people, with an average chance of success in a ruthless, winner-take-all market? Or would they prefer to work with smart, capable people who can adapt to an ever-changing marketplace of tasks and ideas, who care more about the daily challenge of doing something that few if any others are doing Exactly Right, and who view the Big Payday as a potential bonus for excellent execution and the blessing of a fickle market?

I watched some new-ish Google employees start down the former road, eager to defuse an ever-increasing workload (they were outside of engineering proper and had no ready list of questions or expectations to refer to). Once the matter was crystallized per above -- do you want to work with money-grubbing robots, or do you want to keep this company at a standard higher than most on the planet?! -- I noticed a distinct change in the interviews and votes. Once upon a time I was willing to accept average people. Then one day, as the startup I worked for was considering whether we could afford to hire a desperately needed cameraman, it dawned on me that for a small company, literally every employee must be better than their counterparts at established corporations, or your equity is that much more likely to become worthless. Is that what you worked your ass off and sacrificed some of your life to accept?

It's so easy to give in to mediocrity -- and it's deadly, because once it sneaks in, it's really hard to exterminate. Hire people who are smarter than you, if you possibly can. Hire people who you'd like to ask hard, probing questions to which you (or anyone) may not know the answers. And only ever hire people who you absolutely NEED, where you are forced to think -- is this person the one who's going to make the Specific Problems for which we're burning our hard-earned cash go away? And the next round of problems, and the next?

Every time you hire someone you are spending your precious time and deciding whether to spend your precious cash, so you better goddamn well get it right. Startups can't afford to make mistakes -- this article is simply rehashing that point, for corporate chumps who haven't Got It.

henning• 19 years ago

I'm skeptical.

Let's have these touchy-feely visual learner team player super duper people learn about continuations in Scheme, monads in Haskell, the massive libraries in .NET/Java EE, or something else that poses a formidable challenge. Let's see them visually learn their way around that stuff. Then you can call me a loser.

theremora• 19 years ago

The takeaway here: hiring should not be based on rigid criteria.http://jobhacks.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/job-postings-are-de... The advice regarding hiring for startups: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/how_to_hire_the.html http://paulenglish.com/hiring.html

How Your Hiring Techniques attract Losers

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