How to hire great people

For the above subject, Google always were the light posts out there, especially with their hard questions, brainteasers and numbers driven approach. Now Google admits that the brain teasers really aren’t worth the time spent in the interview. This is not really too surprising I think, but having it come from Google, who simply analysed the interview data and later performance appraisals of their employees, is something else.

But, I still like those brain teasers, but for something completely different. I couldn’t care less how people answered, and in Google’s numbers approach, that obviously has value. They grade the answer.

To understand my view, please read the most important sentence ever written about hiring by Dee Hock from Birth of the Chaordic Age:

> Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.

This was our guiding light in all our hiring talks. That, and including the entire team in the decision.

And you can use different means to look at the different parts of the above sentence, but brain teasers actually provide an answer to some of them. It’s not about the answer, but about getting people out of their comfort zone, see their reaction in a weird question, and look at their approach to the answer. Did they answer at all or did they say that they do not do stupid stuff like this. Did they think around it to provide an educated guess or calculate it through? There are a million things you can do but it does provide an idea of how they are thinking, visual, analytical, by example, … . I do agree with Google though that having a real problem to talk about, and talking about something they did in the past, what they are proud of, that kept them awake.

So yes, answers to brain teasers aren’t worth something, but the how of the answer still might hold value.