Week 11, 2025 - On hiring

Song of the week:

Thoughts

$job is in an optimistic mode of operations right now. And nothing says optimism like spending 25% of your time doing interviews!

I've a pretty good mental model and operating system for doing interviews, but that doesn't make them any less arduous. I've been lucky in the 4 roles I'm hiring for that 2 wound up being quick and easy internal movers. And the other two have had very good pipeline. My only complaint is the sheer amount of sourcing I had to do myself to get diverse candidates into the pipeline.

I always do the initial manager interview, which precedes the proper rounds of interviews with my colleagues. And in that conversation, I always leave a few minutes at the end for folks to ask me questions. The role is a little mad, it's new, the company is a little mad, so folks are curious, etc. But the question that always illicits the same, but interesting enough answer, is "what are you looking for in this hire"?

The reason it's interesting to folks is that I don't anchor on technical or business acumen, or the blend of both. You're talking to me, chances are you already have that in abundance. It's that I anchor on four core principles for folks. It's like the four elements of the persons' DNA that they need to succeed with me and my team. They are:

  • Intellectually curious: This should be reasonably obvious. You want to break things apart and put them back together again. You love figuring random things out. You probably have weird hobbies that involve tinkering with things.
  • Open & transparent: You seek out and deliver feedback regularly. You thrive on feedback, and never assume you're right (or wrong, necessarily).
  • Determined: My team generally sits in a go-to-market environment. Not being driven and determined to win a deal, get a project done, or anything in-between means you won't succeed.
  • Entrepreneurial: This is the weakest nomenclature of them all, but I'm referencing the fact that everything is new, weird and often undone. Not because it's not a priority; but because we've not gotten to it yet. You need to get creative and figure things out, sometimes for the first time.

People like my answer because it's obvious that I've thought about it. And it's not so specific to the job, but more to the culture of the team. And on one hand I'm delighted people are into it. On the other it's a bit sad that not every hiring manager has thought about this in their careers.

Photo of the week

(via my flickr)

Tabs

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Published on: 15th March, 2025

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