Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, and Jonathan Rosenberg, a former Senior Vice President at Google, teamed up to write “How Google Works.”
In this book are nine sets of “dos” and “don’ts” when making hiring decisions.
Let’s look at the first three “dos” and “don’ts” with a bit of commentary from yours truly:
“Do hire people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than you are.
“Don’t hire people you can’t learn from or be challenged by.”
Now that’s an interesting bit of advice. Would you be afraid of being surrounded by people who are smarter than you?
Would you prefer to have employees you could simply give orders and directions to and have them follow them?
If that’s the case, maybe you take this one slowly but surely and hire one person who will challenge you. You may find that sufficiently invigorating that you’ll hire another and another like that!
Okay, moving on to the next set of “dos” and “don’ts”:
“Do hire people who will add value to the product and our culture.
“Don’t hire people who won’t contribute well to both.”
How could you know if the person siting in front of you will add value to your product and culture?
Well, one simple way is to ask point blank, “Fred, you know what we do here, how could you add to the product itself and to our culture?”
And the last set of “dos” and “don’ts”:
“Do hire people who will get things done.
“Don’t hire people who think only about problems.”
Probably the best way to determine this is to hire someone for a short stint with you. A conditional hire for a few days or a couple of weeks should give you an idea if your candidate is oriented towards getting things done or is a problem sponge.
I just made that up—problem sponge—but I bet you’ve had a few of those working for you before.
In later posts we’ll take up the other “dos” and “don’ts” from the folks at Google.
