If the Shoe Fits: Hiring Culture
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
For years I’ve told managers ‘you are who you hire‘ and offered them tools so they become more proficient at hiring; this is true whether the company is a startup or it’s been around for decades.
Startup hiring happens in phases, which have a predictable pattern—
- hire your friends,
- hire friends of friends,
- hire ‘outsiders’.
The first two phases usually go smoothly, since friends typically share similar values and, therefore, are at the least synergistic as to the company culture.
Phase three presents a totally different and disconnected challenge.
Accurately identifying a stranger’s values and evaluating how well they mesh with yours is not only difficult, but also time-consuming.
And therein lies the problem—not the difficulty, but the time.
When this subject comes up entrepreneurs often tell me that I don’t understand how busy they are.
They say it’s hard enough just finding the actual skills they need without adding an extra set of cultural hoops for candidates to jump through.
If that doesn’t shut me up they use the ultimate argument, “You haven’t actually done it, so you wouldn’t know.”
However, there must be a reason that Tony Hsieh pays people not to work at Zappos after they go through training and that hiring is number one on his list of how to build a company.
Hire very carefully — you’re creating an enduring culture.
“I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person,” Amazon.com chief Jeff Bezos told a colleague in the company’s early days. Why? “Cultures aren’t so much planned as they evolve from that early set of people.” New employees either dislike the culture and leave or feel comfortable and stay. So the culture becomes “self-reinforcing” and “very stable.”
I wrote about using culture as a screening tool way back in 1999 and have reposted it often, most recently in February.
Your culture, no matter how young, is the best filter you have for finding the kind of people you need to follow in the footsteps of Bezos and Hsieh.
Assuming, of course, that you think they are worth following.
Option Sanity™ mirrors and reinforces culture
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation process. So easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
Image credit: Image credit: kevinspencer
May 25th, 2012 at 1:17 am
[…] wrote about hiring and culture here last Sept and included a link to an article I wrote for MSDN way back in 1999 that explained how to use your […]