A + A = A+ Hiring
By: Jon Santee
Tags: Team Building, Interview, Hiring, Leadership, Job Hunting

I’ve made comments previously around how one of the things I’m most proud of in my career to date is my hiring record. So far I have yet to lose a single person I’ve interviewed and hired to a company. They’ve moved up via promotion from my team, but that’s no loss, that’s a huge win for them and my company.

Yes, I know the streak will come to an end eventually, but for now, I am kinda enjoying it.

So how have I done this? I have a simple A1 + A2 = hired formula.

A1) Attitude:

Whether you like it or not we now live in a professional world where culture is considered more important than most any other factor in employee satisfaction. The culture of a company, from free-wheeling startup working 100 hours a week doing everything to century old mega-corporations with strict, rigid definitions for all aspects of the job, matters more to today’s hires than traditional items such as base pay, bonus, benefits, etc.

This is not limited to Millennials or Gen-Z younger hires either. People across all generation stripes see value in employment in an environment matching their personality, ethics, morals, social values, and work style.

With that, you must be honest and keenly aware of your own company culture. What drew you to work there and what has kept you there? Make a list of those items, but frame them as questions. Here are examples I’ve used in the past to help get a feel for a person’s attitude and help lead them to the environment fitting them best.

How much autonomy do you expect in a position such as this?

What kind of boss do you feel you work best with? What kind of boss would make you miserable?

Tell me about the work/class/group environment in which you are the most comfortable.

Tell me about the work/class/group environment that drove you bonkers.

How do you get mentally prepared for your day? What helps you unwind?

What was your best boss/coworker/classmate/teacher/team like? What made them the best?

Find someone who is an attitude fit to your leadership style, your team makeup, and your company culture, and you’ve gone a long way in finding someone who will fit in and stick around.

A2) Aptitude:

In the technology world in which I live the ability to learn new material is often superior to the knowledge you bring to the table. Many other industries also have this requirement. Yes, there are lots of easy examples one could list where specific knowledge is needed, but the ability to learn new is no less important then either. Put another way, I often say, “If someone can learn the team we can teach them the tech.”

When interviewing someone and asking technical questions, listen to them. Not just the answers, but how they answer.

Do they speak confidently and look at you?

Do they have a firm grasp of the vocabulary needed to answer questions?

Do they easily admit to areas they are not experts but explain how they would learn the concept to become the expert?

Ask them things they should not be able to answer with the goal of finding out how they would approach the problem.

Ask them about how they best learn, be it book, instructor, video, etc. Someone who loves learning can quickly identify their modality.

When sitting across the table from a good fit these two areas of conversation will easily chew through 30–60 minutes of allocated interview time. It should be easy and flow from topic to topic, example to example. If not, that’s a major red flag.

Finally, if you’ve done more than a couple interviews you now have a “gut feeling” when sitting through one. Unless you happen to be George Castanza going with your gut feeling is often the best thing you can do. Listen to that hunch and feeling carefully.

There’s no magic wand out there to create a perfect candidate but following this formula had led to a decent amount of success in my small circle.

Happy interviewing!