A Hiring Unlock

Calling bullshit on a hiring process that never worked

In the land of $150K noobs is it possible that we are overvaluing talent and undervaluing the things that really matter? Case in point — Have you ever had a candidate that aced a coding challenge, aced their interview, and comes with logos, accomplishments, and credentials that seem to flow effortless from their perfectly appointed resume?

Yet your gut is screaming “Nooooo, don’t hire them!”

So I did something that seams completely normal to me. Using LinkedIn, I went back to every single person I’ve hired since 2005 and I wrotes down every time the talent, IQ, and credentials said yes, my gut said no, and I hired them anyway. Here are the results.

• Since 2005, I have personally hired 152 people in my companies
• Of those, 50 fall into the super talented but “N000000s’
• That’s more that 1/3rd of every person I hired
• Of those, 100% were a negative impact
• 10% quit or were later fired
• And, 90% lingered!

So in conclusion, I’m a moron.

But I’m not alone. Turns out I have a lot of founder friends and it appears that they are all equally as stupid as I am. Every time I talk to them about this they say “yup, I’ve had those candidates. And, yup I didn’t trust my gut and then I regretted it. And yup, those fuckers nearly ruined my company!”

So I decided to do something about it.

Instead of only testing talent, IQ, and logos, I began testing other factors. Specifically, I now test three new things.

• Passion-match — a natural attitude of holy-shit excited-ness for the same thing that I was passionate about. And I don’t mean general passion, I mean the type of passion that could easily be misdiagnosed by a doctor as a mental condition.
• Like-mindedness — a natural propensity to have the same perspective on key elements of what makes my North, my North. What I mean here is NOT that I’m look for “yes” people, but rather people who are easy for me to get along with — to make decisions with.
• Do they know who they are yet — meaning they are not in any danger of suddenly needing to go on a backpacking trip through Europe to find themselves and do yoga.

So I went back to that list of the 50 people and I applied my new metrics.

About 20% didn’t have a passion match. And as I looked through this list I’d say about half didn’t have any passion and half had a different passion. The ones without passion were just losers — no ops. The ones with different passions were generally super talented, but problem makers. Working with them was like working against a current. They were the people that put “No” in North.

About 80% of these people didn’t have a like-mindedness match. Of these people I would classify all of them as assholes in my book. To fair, they’re really not assholes, but the reality was that I just didn’t see the world the same way they did. Sometimes it was work ethic, sometimes it was ethics itself, and sometimes it was in fact just pure asshole-ry. These people were the biggest problem makers of them all. Super talented, high-IQ’d people are very dangerous. It’s like mixing oil and water.

About 30% were people who didn’t know who they were. While these people are the least poisonous, they are the most annoying. These are the people who are smart, they’re talented, and then the minute you invest your heart and soul in them, they drop the mic and peace out. Then you see them posting selfies of them doing yoga at 10,000 feet with some Tibetan monk and suddenly find yourself contemplating a life of crime.

Here’s some things I now include in the interviewing process

• I let them interview me. Turning the tables on someone and letting them interview you as the founder will tell you an immense amount of information about them. It’s been one of my biggest unlocks. By doing this you’ll natural find their passion, how they think, and what they value.
• Just ask them what their passion is. I’ve actually had a candidate tell me that their passion was the exact opposite of mine. And after asking why they wanted to interview at my company if they weren’t passionate about my vision they didn’t know why. Turns out candidates can be stupid too.
• Just ask them if they know who they are — you’ll be shocked how many people will just come out and say they have no clue. Then ask them if they are searching for who they are — keeping in mind that there are the rare few who don’t know who they are and don’t care (not sure what to do with those people)
• Ask the candidate where else they are interviewing. If a candidate tells you they’re not sure they want to work at a startup or at a large company, you might have someone who doesn’t know who they are.
• Ask a candidate to do another coding challenge after the first. If there response is “Bring it on!” and they respond with code the next day, you might have someone with a perfect passion match.
• Ask a candidate how they would respond to a number of situations that would derail your North. Don’t lead them though. Give them options and see which one’s they naturally choose.
• Last, and perhaps most importantly, I schedule a 3 hour working session with a candidate. In this time frame we actually open up the code and work. We actually pair up and solve a real bug, implement a new feature, and push actual real code and solve real problems together.

This last one is also gold. I’ve learned over the years that some of the engineers that interviewed best have turned out to be some of the worst employees I’ve ever had. As well, I’ve interviewed some people that turn into morons during and interview, but after hiring them became some of the strongest employees in the company.

There is no better way to interview someone than simply working with them.

For the past year I’ve taken this lesson learned to heart and I’ve done a few things that have truly set me free. First, I wrote down all the people that were in my current company that fell into these buckets and I gingerly got them out of my company. Then, with new candidates, I have been using the new metrics. If any candidate flagged my gut on any one of my new metrics, it was an automatic veto. The result has been astonishing. My team is cohesive, happy, and insanely productive.

To boot, I no longer feel like such a moron.