How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with..

Actually that’s a title of an entry of Marc Andreessen‘s new blog. He’s the sort of guy that gets 48,562 pageviews in his first 4.5 days of blogging. I imagine Sam Morgan would get a similar (NZ scaled) response if he started blogging.

I agree with Marc’s criteria for hiring good people – (Intelligence,) Drive, Curiosity and Ethics.

They are in fact curiously similar to the McKinsey criteria of

– problem solving
– drive and aspiration
– personal impact
– leadership skills

It is so much more fun to work with smart, motivated and curious people. These sort of folk we often call ‘interesting’.

I’ve also long been a fan of a very strong ethics acid test – any whiff of dodgy ethics and I really don’t want anything to do with an employer or potential employee. I’ve walked (and ran) away from that sort of situation before.

Trade Me and Fairfax are incredibly ethical places, and it shows in the sort of people that work there and how they are treated. It also shows in the results.

Andreesson’s recommended hiring process is also good (he does tend to go on a little, but it is early days for his blog). Here’s his list:

Have a written hiring process
Use a basic skills test
Write down interview questions
Pay attention to the little things in the interview
Pay attention to little things in reference checks
Don’t be afraid to admit and deal with hiring mistakes
Pay top performers really well

not much to disagree with there. I would add to the list:

Use networks (especially current staff) to find interview candidates
Use a consistent interview process:

-Use behavioral questions and drill down to find evidence
-Use consulting-style cases (I used “value Trade Me” for a while)
-Use multiple rounds, and 1-1 interviews
-Put them in front of a computer and observe how they work while challenging them with increasingly difficult tasks.
-Help the interviewee demonstrate they have what it takes, not the reverse

Hire for quality – even if you don’t have a job for them yet
Call references, but not the ones on the c.v.
and, again, pay top performers really well