Hiring for Exhaustive Enthusiasm

Nobel Prize Winner, Sir Edward Victor Appleton said once, “I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.”

I do too. I think anyone can be amazing at any skill when they have enthusiasm. And without it, 20 years worth of experience in a skill won’t be worth much at all.

There once was an energetic, redheaded college graduate, fresh out of school, ready to take on the world.

She didn’t want to apply for “junior” positions, where pan-handlers outside could make more in a week than she could. She took a long, stern hard look at her 100k in college debt and with a fearless mind, set out for her dream job: “art director.”

Maybe applying for the job of “art director” was a bit lofty of a goal right out of college, but with a little enthusiasm and a knack for copywriting, she nailed her cover letters and landed at least 20 job interviews for jobs way out of her league. Or at least, traditionally out of her league.

After a few contract jobs and a lot of interviews, she landed the role of “creative director” at a marketing and research company. And for the next six years she worked 70 hours a week to earn her place in a job title normally suited for those ten years her senior. And she liked working that hard. And she was sometimes exhausted, but she still spent nights and weekends for the company who gave her a chance, always with their best interests in mind.

She was enthusiastic, dedicated, passionate. She was promoted several times until finally she was Publisher. The Publisher.

She also became the published author of several books, was asked to speak at conferences, taught day-long workshops around the US and her research was taught and requested all over the world.

That was me. From 2006–2011 before I launched BuzzFarmers. Exhaustingly enthusiastic. Not exhausted, though. Never exhausted.

In fact, “never bored” is more accurate.

Now it’s 2015 and I have a team of enthusiastic employees and freelance artists whom I adore. I love them because they care about what they do. They don’t work hard because they have to, but because they want to. They get that the start-up work doesn’t always start at 9am and end at 5pm but that sometimes they get to take a Friday off, or go mini-golfing on a Wednesday afternoon to re-discover their work-life balance.

I won’t say it’s been easy to build our team. It’s been difficult and expensive trial and error at times. I’ve worked hundreds of hours in a month, months on end, because I’d rather do something right than just hire anybody to get it done. “Get some sleep” is a phrase that I hear at least once a month.

In case you’re wondering, I had my first computer-less weekend off in three years last summer and it was glorious.

But when you have a small team like ours, every hire counts.

Endless Curiosity is an Amazing Trait

Like me, our team wants to do something important, lead great projects and they’re infinitely curious about everything. If someone clicks a Tweet, they want to know why. If a blog post outperforms all the others, they want to discover the formula. If we begin to lose rank on a popular post, they want to find out who’s replaced it and what makes them so special.

Wouldn’t you agree that it’s much more interesting to look for the answers, rather than claiming you already know them all?

So this is my call-out to you. If you identified with this post, are endlessly enthusiastic, don’t ask for permission, are curious and ready to jump in head first, we’re hiring at BuzzFarmers.