Most prospective hires embrace the opportunity. We've had people write poems and do martial arts demonstrations. We've had race car drivers and firefighters. Of course, sometimes people just stand and read their r sum s, and that tells us something about them too. They help retain the employees already there.
Athene employees take the auditions seriously.
About 25 people, on average, show up at each audition, and some employees rarely miss any. Auditions by PhD-level candidates resemble doctoral defenses, drawing many more people and tending to run much longer than an hour. Once on board, new engineers find that things at Athene are, well, different. The company has no secretaries and no HR department. Instead of building the typical corporate infrastructure, Athene has put its energies into nurturing an environment that adapts to people's needs, rather than expecting the inverse.