magnify360 Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about how recruiting has changed over the last 6 months, from the little things to the big things.

Everyone always looks to talent, and reads thousands of resumes to find “talent”. Just because people put down a list of things they’ve done in the past, doesn’t mean they’re talented. “Involved in a team that generated lots of positive ROI” generally means that the company’s profits increased when they laid off the poor bastard.

Then we looked for drive and teamwork, because we knew that raw talent wasn’t enough. So we invented great questions like “are you a good team player?” (hate to meet the person who said no), and “what’s your favorite team sport” (rugby, because most of the team has their head up the hooker’s ass).

Chris Lyman, Fonality’s CEO/Janitor talked about measuring caring in an interview…. with the obvious harassment suit repercussions…. His comments inspired me to think more about how to measure all of the “intangibles” in an interview process. Because my shareholders will tell you I’ve done a lot of trial and error in this realm.

Last week I had one the of the best interviews ever. This guy was coming in as a senior level technical developer / architect, and after a quick set of introductions, he began grilling me, the CEO & Founder, about the company, our technology roadmap, what our customers were saying, where our biggest challenges were, what we were going to do with the company, etc…

This guy CARES. He doesn’t care about making a good impression on me. He doesn’t care about laying roses where I walk or about his specific job description. He CARES about the company that he’s going to join, not politics, perks, and position.

He didn’t care about what part of the code he would be working on. He didn’t care about how many people he could manage. He didn’t care whether the sodas were free (they are), or if the foosball table is broken (it is), or…

Why? Because he CARES about where the company is headed. He cares to know what kinds of challenges the company is facing. He cares what kind of team he is joining. And in the end, he knows that being part of a company that he CARES ABOUT is more important than a title of CEO or Janitor.

After 30 minutes of his questions, I learned far more about him than if I had used that time to ask him about his favorite hobbies or which programming languages he knew. Most importantly, I knew that if I put the company (or whatever small part of the company) in his hands, he would always put the company first in making his decisions. Not what he felt like doing. Not what I wanted. But what was best for the company.