Entrepreneurs: How Do You Hire?
by Miki Saxon
In 2007 Google developed an algorithm to improve their hiring. In a post citing that I wrote, “Google’s known for only hiring grads with a 3.7+ GPA, double 800 SAT scores and world-class interviewing skills—none of which are viable predictors of creativity or working success.”
Considering the story related by George Anders in his new book The Rare Find: Reinventing Recruiting it must not have worked.
These days the hot recruiting strategy for Google, Facebook and others are puzzles—at least for tech types, since the puzzles are focused on technical issues involving software and coding.
The great point about the puzzles is that they are open to anyone who wants to solve them, no matter their education or experience.
That’s right, no-name school or no school, iffy or rotten GPA; what’s important is how they think and how creative they are, but if you’re in the very early stages of hiring, even brilliant puzzle solving isn’t enough.
Your first hires are so critical, not just to traditional success, but because of the impact they have on determining the course of your culture, which can impact hiring forever.
Cezary Pietrzak, co-founder and director of business development at Wanderfly offers excellent insights on identifying your own gold-plated hires.
He assumes the candidates are “smart, talented, and, generally speaking, a rock star” and talks about the characteristics for which you should look.
Most of these are behavioral in nature; you’ll likely not find them on a resume, and traditional interview questions won’t uncover them, either. Yet their importance cannot be overstated, as often times they’re the difference between a great and poor working relationship.
Identifying these assets requires real work and a lot of it; ideally you’ll make interviewing a core competency for yourself and your entire company.
It requires committing time ungrudgingly, because you recognize the stratospheric ROI of good hiring.
After all, you are betting your company on those you hire.
Flickr image credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}
May 9th, 2012 at 1:17 am
[…] things are changing. Even mighty Google that once hired only 3.7+ GPAs has changed how they recruit using puzzles to identify talent that might fall through the cracks—assuming it even got that […]