Supercharge Your Hiring with Culture Fit and Superpowers
A little background: We’re doing a bunch of hiring at Clearcover with no signs of slowing down which made me think about our hiring methodology. This is what we’ve learned along the way and I would love to hear what others are trying too.
Pause. Take a moment to envision what success means to you.
Maybe you imagine your product being sold internationally, Yelp overflowing with positive customer reviews or the CEO of your top prospect signing on the dotted line.
One thing that they all have in common is that they aren’t going to happen by accident. To succeed, you first need to plan. That’s why you likely have a thoughtful plan for product development, customer service or sales. However, you might be ignoring a more important factor for actually achieving your vision.
Your hiring methodology.
In my previous role as a venture capitalist and now as a founder myself, I’ve observed many young companies make hiring decisions based on little more than gut feeling. Too often, you hear post-interview recaps summarized with, “They seemed like a good fit”, “I liked them”, or even worse, “They’re just not someone I could imagine hanging out with.” Founders often underestimate the impact of hiring on long-term success and in turn, they don’t assign a methodology.
That’s why when Clearcover was just two people, we implemented our own hiring methodology centered on two principles: superpower and culture fit (or values-based interviewing). And while our tactics for evaluating these attributes have evolved, these same principles still drive our hiring choice.
The Power of Superpower (or “Hell Yes”)
Superpower is the first half of our hiring methodology. As an entrepreneur, you’re faced with incredibly long odds of success. Potential employees can’t just be good enough — they need to be extraordinary. And to find extraordinary, you seek the superpower that makes the person truly special for your company’s needs.
Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote a fantastic summary on executive hiring capturing many of the primary benefits of looking for a superpower. One of these key benefits is focusing your hiring on strength, rather than lack of weakness.
Ben says, “Hiring for lack of weakness just means that you’ll optimize for pleasantness. Rather, you must figure out the strengths you require and find someone who is world class in those areas despite their weaknesses in other, less important domains.”
By focusing your search on people who bring world-class talents to the table, even in the presence of weakness elsewhere, you can optimize your team to compete at the highest level.
Another way to obtain a ‘superpower employee’ is by seeking a “hell yes” rather than the “absence of no.” But to find that “hell yes”, you, as your business’ leader, first need to understand the open role well enough to know what superpower is required for the role in question.
Imagine you were seeking a new VP of Sales. What attributes and experiences, very specifically, would constitute a “hell yes” for the role? Make a list, then check it with people who’ve done the job, or hired the role before. You’d be surprised how many people start the hiring process, or even make a hire, without ever figuring that out.
Why culture fit matters
No matter what kind of business you’re in, culture matters to your long-term success. Recent research has shown that companies without an intentional culture suffer from 16% lower profitability, 18% lower productivity and 50% higher voluntary turnover. [1]
Before examining how to hire for company culture, let’s first talk about the building blocks of culture — your company’s core values. Formalizing your core values is the key to sustaining your company culture. Core values guarantee your team shares a unified mindset, even as your company grows. If you haven’t formalized your core values yet (you likely have unconsciously formed some), go formalize them now. Here’s is a useful article by Jim Collins about the process of ‘discovering them’ and why they matter so much.
At Clearcover, we designed our core values by assessing the most productive people we’ve ever worked with. We looked for the things that made them exceptional. We came up with things like resilience (grit), accountability and tact.
We specifically chose core values that represented attributes our teammates would embody in their interactions with each other, our customers and our partners. However, our core values are not things that we aim to teach. Rather, we seek people who possess them. Your values should be inherent to your employees as professionals, and as people.
So how do you actually interview for core values? One way is to look for examples of them in prior behavior related to an interviewee’s approach to problem-solving, communication and failure. For example, when assessing someone’s ability, we’ll ask, “What’s the most complicated thing you’ve worked on and can you explain that to me?”
This question is very telling because it’ll reveal a person’s ability to navigate complex situations, simplify them and not get sidetracked by peripheral details (a key trait to succeed at a startup.) Sidenote: If their answer is longer than 15 minutes, they probably aren’t a fit for the job.
Coming full circle
Now you have a pipeline of great people who intrinsically share your company’s core values and have the necessary superpowers. What’s next?
Using a hiring methodology during the winnowing process will ensure a final pool of strong candidates, but unless you can also work that process into the actual hiring decision, you haven’t brought the principles full circle. In other words, you will have optimized the process in micro, but not in macro.
There are two ways to ensure you’re applying the methodology to your final hiring decision. One, there must be unanimity among the hiring group with regard to culture fit. If anyone is a “maybe” on the candidate’s possession of our core values, then everyone is a “no.” Two, require at least one of the interviewer’s evaluation of superpower to be “hell yes.” Unlike culture fit, you don’t need to require unanimity in this evaluation — doing so would be inconsistent with the “strength, not absence of weakness” approach. However, require that someone with enough credibility to evaluate the candidate’s skills advocate for them, even if others disagree.
Now, let’s be clear…we’ve made some mistakes, and you will too. And this specific hiring methodology won’t be for everyone. In fact, I’m sure large portions of it will change for us too.
What’s important, however, is that you have some set of principles to rely on. Even if they’re not implemented perfectly, they’ll force critical thinking in the selection process, bring intentionality to your company’s culture and position your business for long-term success.
And when the time comes to celebrate your vision achieved, your team — the right team — will be cheering along right with you.
