Richard Sheridan (Cofounder and CEO, Menlo Innovations) wrote Joy Inc to share insight into all XP practices that worked for his Org. Here he shares the hiring process at Menlo.
The hiring process is a key junction in which to build and foster your culture of joy. The traditional interview process — two people sit across from each other and lying to each other for two hours. Six weeks into the job, you can hear your new recruit complaining — the job is different from the one she heard about in the interview. And the Boss/Manager has the gall to ask, “Why can’t I find good people?”
The first few weeks for a new employee are often a hazing ritual comprising boredom and confusion, a rite of passage for the uninitiated.
If you want to create your own version of Joy Inc, your current screening and interviewing process is likely defeating your intention.
Your culture should be so abundantly obvious during the interview process, it would be impossible for any potential employee to miss. The goal of your interviewing process should be to identify bright, capable people who are a good fit for your culture and want it to thrive.
Superstars need not apply! A company defines itself by what it chooses to say no to as much as by what it says yes to. We are trying to build a team, not a collection of of individual heroes who can’t get along with anybody. The days of individual heroes in software industry is long gone. Don’t want them. Don’t need them. They don’t add joy.
Rewarding staff for referrals — a bad idea!
Hire Humans, Not Polished Resumes
Hiring for skills wasn’t going to work. I stopped looking for what people knew and became far more concerned with who potential employees were as human beings.
Your interview needs to match your culture. Cultures and teams are like families and tribes. Each one has different customs and habits. Each has variations on what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable. There is no way to know this in a 2 hour interview.
At Menlo, our first interviewing imperative is, “Do you have good kindergarten skills?” Are you respectful? Do you play well with others? Do you share? Given we work in pairs all day long, this is crucial.
A resume — full of vague titles, employment periods, compliance ratings, university degrees, and the illuminating “skill section” — is pretty useless for the all-important culture fit imperative, so we don’t read very much of it.
Menlo has better ideas of how to discover who you are as a human being, and we’ve crafted an interview process in which we don’t have to ask any questions of the candidates.
Cast a Wider Net
We invite all potential candidates in at once. 30 to 50 at same time. We call these “Extreme Interview” events. Usually takes place two to three times a year, as needed.
Prior to this, we send material about Menlo to all.
We setup tables remarkably like a speed dating session. Participants are randomly paired off. A Menlonian is assigned to observe each pair as it works through three exercises. 20 minute paper based. Ex: Estimating how many hours it would take to implement a variety of story cards for a fictitious project. Our exercises are meant to demonstrate team work, not technical skills. The purpose though is to make your partner look good. If your partner struggles, help him or her out. If you know something the other person doesn’t know, share it. The goal is to get your partner a second interview. In these first few minutes, the candidates are confronted full force by our cultural values.
What becomes quiet clear is that people quickly revert to their natural style, even if it doesn’t benefit them in this process. We’ve seen people grab the pencil out of the other person’s hand. Others have completely ignored their pair partner, focusing all their attention on the observer.
An exercise example: Require the pair to decide what features should be selected to fit in the budget for a fictional project, based on the value and relative cost of each of those features. Another exercise is to create paper and pencil screen designs for imagined users.
All the while, the observers watch how each person contributes to the problem solving, how they share, how they argue, how they collaborate, and whether they actually get something done. Through out it, the observers ask themselves, “Would I like to pair with this person for a week? Would I feel supported if I were struggling? Would I be able to support them and would they listen if I did? Would I learn something from this person? Would they help me grow?”
We pair off interviewers three times, each time assigning a new partner and a new observer. 20 minutes for each pairing exercise. It’s noisy. It’s high energy. It’s intense. It’s Menlo.
After the pairing, we wrap up with closing remarks, open the floor to a few minutes of Q&A from the interviewees. We also offer interviewers to send e-mail feedback about their experience. Reward for the extra-followup is a book of their choice from a list of our recommendations.
Let the Team Build the Team
After interviewers leave, our team of observers gather to discuss what they saw. We talk about each and every interviewee, spending about 5 minutes per candidate. The central questions: Did we see enough evidence of good kindergarten skills to invite the person in for a second interview? Would the team feel good about pairing with him or her for a day?
The first thing we do is vote with our thumbs. If all three observers for a candidate give a thumbs-up, he/she gets an immediate invite to the second interview. Similarly, if all three thumbs-down, no discussion, no invite back. If it is mixed, we discuss. This turns out to be an awesome conversation about our culture and why a given candidate fits our culture or not. It’s a wonderful opportunity to internally reinforce our cultural intentions.
Second Round: Do Real Work
For second interview, candidate comes in alone for an entire day. A one-day paid contract to work on a real client project all day. We bill the work to the client, who is informed of this ahead of time, at a lower rate.
The candidate is assigned to pair on a single assignment on one of our projects. Pairing can change — with one in morning, with another afternoon. By pairing, Menloians get a much more pointed sense of the person’s programming skills. If the candidate doesn’t know the technology we are working with, that’s okay. We watch to see whether the candidate is curious, asking questions and learning on the fly, while translating his or her expertise into this unknown territory.
End of day, candidate gets a sense of how this pairing works. Many have heard of it, few have actually tried it. Its’ not for everyone and we are okay with that. We believe an interview should give both sides of the table a chance to evaluate fit for culture.
Once the candidate leaves for the day, the two or three people who paired with him/her meets the Manager. She asks them a critical question: Would you pair with this person again? If the feedback is positive, we invite the person in for a three-week trial.
If the trial goes well, the person joins the team. The hard work of acclimation is actually accomplished during the Extreme Interviewing process. We’ve eliminated the dreaded “first day of work” experience.
Don’t Delay in Making Hiring Decisions
We make all decisions quickly and rather effortlessly.
One of the reasons that most firms face hiring challenges is that their interview process takes too darn long. Once a great candidate is identified, the bureaucracy of HR kicks in. It takes weeks for the candidate to hear back from the company, and by the time the offer is extended the candidate has found another position elsewhere. Our process is fast and catches people while they are still excited.
Recruiting is easy. Word of mouth brings in lot of people. Our reputation precedes us. Unlike other companies, we are not looking for the perfect someone with the exact skills. At Menlo, we are looking for able learners with curiosity. We can teach skills all day long. If they have a decent foundation, teaching is trivial.
A Birdcage Without Bars
Not all will succeed. If we do have to let someone go, we do so with dignity and respect. It should never be easy to fire people.
While we are also sad to see long-timers move on, we know that it is a natural part of a healthy culture and befits the team whose central theme is to honor the whole life of each team member.
Our bus at Menlo has many stops — but it has the right people on the bus at the right time.
altLearners 