Be All You Can Eat: Employee Recruitment Synergistic Matrix, Part 7
One of the many rave reviews we get about our organization—despite the fact we’ve made zero profit in the last six months and several of our investors are anxiously awaiting the delayed release of our super-secret technological invention that’s the size of a Volkswagen bus but (hint) doesn’t fly—is the following:
“The people are great.”
We’ve heard that from our customers at least four times after we prompt them to say so.
Although, surprisingly, some mystery person left a decidedly unprompted Yelp review that said as much. Clearly this wasn’t one of our grumpy investors, and based on the timing, wording, and reviewer’s profile, sounded an awful lot like the UPS dude who has a crush on our receptionist Bridget. But whatever, a win’s a win.
Bottom line: there’s nothing more rewarding than hearing your people are “great.” That’s what we’re all here for right? Hello?
Mediocre Companies Don’t Care About Their People
Come on fellow super rich executive types, you’re picking up what we’re putting down: your people are your most important priority, you even say so on your websites.
In fact, virtually every website that represents some form of professional organization paints the perfect pretty picture of simply phenomenal employees functioning flawlessly in fabulous fellowship. Typically happily gathered around laptops atop a polished oak conference table or possibly clustered before some techno-wizardry display screen with hundreds of data visualization outputs portrayed in 4,000 colors.
So it simply must be true. We know it’s true for us, because we only hire great people, thanks to our secret sauce: Recruiter Class XVII, Ingrid Van Dorian.
Ingrid Is Super Scary And Probably Originated From A Wolf Pack
Ingrid hails from Shreveport and refuses to incorporate recruiting-specific AI tools because…well, yesterday she specifically said, “I know what you’re up to—10x the workload with -20x the staff, no thanks. Besides, effective recruiting is all about learning someone’s character traits and attributes, then matching them to an environment where they’re valuable. It’s really not that hard, people just make it hard. Don’t make my job hard.”
At which point we put away our official AI-Everything: How To Replace The Great Unwashed spreadsheet that contains detailed analysis of all our AI-tool adoption options including cost, benefit, return on investment, how many staff would be “impacted,” not to mention a teeny tiny microscopic section on data security and ethical guidelines we didn’t spend too much time on because we figure nobody else is.
Indeed, it’s much better to follow Ingrid’s lead, partly because we’re terrified of her, but mostly because she has this insanely practical way to learn about a candidate’s character traits and attributes to determine if they’d be valuable and useful within a given job description.
Speaking of which, despite our constant urging for Ingrid to move faster, she for some insane reason insists on pouring over a given job description in microscopic detail with both the responsible department head and manager so she fully understands what we’re trying to accomplish with the role. A posture she communicates by stomping into our boardroom, looming over our conference table, and stating, “Listen you morons, need to go slow to go fast. Stay out of my way and let me run my show.”
Terrifying. Paul McCann, our interim Chief Operating Officer, who’s admittedly quite uptight, literally stands in a corner listening to his Calm app immediately after she storms off muttering profanities to herself.
The Matrix Of All Matrices
But 100% practical. As for the character trait/attribute analysis, here’s Ingrid’s methodology, which she openly admits she merely replicated from Netflix co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings, which we re-branded to fit our various Official Company Programs And Serious Initiatives, and thus titled, Be All You Can Eat: Employee Recruitment Synergistic Matrix, Part 7:
The Dinner Test: Take every serious candidate out to eat—not some fancy place, just the local diner—and watch how they treat the waitstaff. You learn everything you need to know about someone's character by observing whether they're decent to people who can't do anything for them career-wise.
The Keeper Question: After every hire, the hiring manager asks themselves monthly: 'If this person told me they were quitting tomorrow, would I fight to keep them?' If the answer's no, we part ways immediately with a nice severance. Better to cut bait early than waste everyone's time pretending it'll work out.
Values Over Procedures: Who cares if someone can recite our mission statement backwards—care if their actions match our mission, vision, and values, and that they own the outcomes. Give us someone who is enrolled in why we’re here, but thinks for themselves, over someone who follows a checklist any day of the week.
High-Autonomy Assessment: During interviews, present real scenarios and see if they wait for permission or take initiative. People who thrive here don't need their hand held—they need to be comfortable making calls and living with the consequences.
The Openness Factor: Look for people who can give and receive feedback without their ego imploding. Feedback is not about the person, it’s about the work. If someone gets defensive when we challenge their thinking, they're not going to survive our culture where we actually tell each other the truth.
You Should Be Doing It Like This
Indeed, Ingrid’s “people over process” ethos has shaped our reputation as a high-performance, team-oriented environment. That’s why when we hear, “the people are great,” we know it’s because Ingrid does a fantastic job of finding those who never want to be right, but rather always want to be always effective, and possess characteristics and attributes that both fit and amplify our culture of building Volkswagon-sized technological innovations that will one day make us all rich. Ah, after we pay back the investors, that is.
It does wonders for the vibe around here too.