#109 - On Hiring
Weakness, failure, and happy
Who you hire is everything for a startup.
It’s the quickest route to triumph or disaster.
I’ve seen both, and got it very wrong as well as right.
Here’s three things I’ve learnt.
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Weakness
“What’s your weakness?” The old cliché.
The weakness in question doesn’t matter so much. Perhaps if it’s “I physically assault everyone I work with” then you’ve got your answer.
But generally it’s less what they say but how they say it.
Some people just can’t do it. They can’t come up with a genuine weakness. They’ll offer a poorly veiled strength, or, often nothing at all. “I can’t think of one…” I’ve heard that more than once!
But others do the opposite. They’ll reel off weaknesses, with a genuine interest in the topic. They are aware.
To confirm, it’s the latter I’m looking for.
Because they’re self aware, yes. But just as important: They have intellectual humility. They’re interested in the truth rather than some inflated image of themselves.
Intellectually humility is everything to culture. How do you respond when something goes wrong? Is it a scramble to assign the blame? Or a search for the truth? I know which I’d pick.
Failures
Ben and I have our fair share of failure. We’ve seen how it all goes wrong. Underrated experience, I think.
Experience of failure is a big tick in my book.
You learn more in the failures. Seeing what can really go wrong helps you understand the essence. And it’s humbling, naturally.
Give me back-to-back failure experience over ex-McKinsey any day of the week.
Happy
A tip from Patrick Collison to close.
“A good way to hack a good culture is to hire people that are already happy.”
Wildly underrated point. Some people do just exude good vibes. Look for that.
To be blunt: Negative people poison culture. Positive people build it. And it’s not one for one either. Put one negative person into a team of 5 and they drags down the whole team.
Hire for happy.
Besides, it’ll be far more fun :)
My Week in Books📚
This is a scheduled post as I’m in Greece for a week and offline. I’ll catch you up on two weeks of books upon return!
Unplugged Latest 🌳📵
As above…
A Final Thought 💡
“I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.”
―Lee Iacocca
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