I interviewed for several positions in the last few months, and that too fresh from listening to people like Paul English who have finessed the practice of hiring to an incredible art+science. I had drunk the kool-aid and only interviewed for positions I was passionate about and with companies that I thought I could make significant contributions to. My experience and the prescribed best practices were a world apart.
It started with a company trying to source authoritative information from the wikipedia, assuming it would not have crossed my mind to Google myself. They topped it off by sending me an email (which I have saved) questioning my integrity and intelligence. Struck rather speechless and extremely offended, I escalated the issue to a certain level within their organization, and then moved on, overwhelmed by the negative energy, making a mental note to never ever cross paths again. I was off to a great start at the races.
It was followed by an experience where it took a full 6.5 weeks from the date of initial contact to hear the outcome and this experience was even more strange - they requested FIVE references overnight after 2 rounds of interviews, and I pinged a lot of very busy people who were very gracious and agreed to serve as my reference at such short notice. These references were then made to wait a week, in some cases called late, in other cases had their requests for preferred communication modes ignored. Each reference was interrogated for at least 45 minutes and *then*, I was told that I didn’t meet the basic job description after all. I had already completed 2 round of interviews before this. I might be forgiven for thinking they’d figure out I didn’t meet their basic criteria a lot sooner than this! Chalk that down as weird experience #2.
Then came two interview experiences where no one would tell me what POSITION I was interviewing for, or even which group within the company, but instead repeatedly kept asking me “what would you like to do?"! Apparently this is a part of their strategy to assess where I would fit best and to prevent candidates from giving canned answers. (Yes, I had applied for a specific position - but the minute I walked in, my interviewers made it clear that it’s not necessarily the position I was being interviewed for and wouldn’t tell me what else I was being considered for!). Seriously, if the candidate doesn’t even know which group they’re interviewing for, leave alone the position, how on earth are they supposed to tell you what they can do for you?! Maybe this strategy might work if they only interviewed people with the exact background and skill set needed, in which case they will be able to hear what they want to hear. But given my diverse background, I need to know what it is you want done before I can tell you whether I have any relevant experience, and how I can help! It’s simply not possible to list every skill, kitchen-sink style, on a one page resume, and not confuse the heck out of the reader. I was surprised to come across not one, but two companies that followed this interview method.
Next came another interesting experience - this company made me go through 3 rounds of interviews, including a take-home exam! I invested over 20 hours interviewing with this company. I thought the interviews went extremely went well and was therefore shocked to hear that I hadn’t made the cut. I requested feedback and got none. I then tried escalating my request for feedback and got no response - not even a polite email explaining it’s not company policy to provide feedback. Really? And this is considered acceptable? You ask a candidate to invest 20+ hours of their time interviewing, but will not take 10 minutes to provide one-time feedback even after I had made it clear, in writing, that verbal feedback is perfectly fine (in case they’re worried about liability issues) and I was strictly asking for self-improvement purposes only. That completely turned me off the company culture.
I muse about this for a couple of reasons:
1. Are our hiring practices so screwed up in this country (I have no outside the US interview experience) that interested AND qualified candidates must jump through ridiculous hoops in order to get hired? Maybe it’s a function of the economy - hiring managers only want to hire people who are an exact skill fit. It flies against Paul’s wisdom (which I agree with) about hiring for
intelligence, attitude, lack of dysfunctional behavior and the ability to get stuff done.
2. Is my experience just an unlucky coincidence or have others experienced something similar?
3. Why is there such a huge disconnect between the theory and practice of hiring?
When it’s my turn to hire, I intend to hang Paul’s advice on my wall and make it my mantra.
UPDATE: I heard from a number of friends after they read this post. The story has a happy ending fortunately: I will be joining a stealth start-up come January.
Showing posts with label Paul English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul English. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Paul English @ MIT
Our speaker at Founder's journey this week is Paul English, one of the co-founders of Kayak. He started out with a brief biographical sketch.
Kayak is the 4th company founded by Paul. He was introduced to his co-founder Steve Hafner of Orbitz by Joel Cutler at General Catalyst. Steve pitched Paul over a couple of beers. Steve knew the travel business and Paul knew technology, and neither were experts in the other's domain. Paul used this to make the point that when you meet someone, if you have instincts that this would be a fun person to work with or has the skills you don't, learn to listen to that instinct and act on it!
Paul then touched upon the topic of hiring people. He mentioned that his strategy is to *always* be recruiting. He is always tuned to "who has that thing I am looking for?", and keeps an eye open always. This sounded like excellent advice to me. Self-awareness is a must, especially for entrepreneurs who need to hire to complement their strengths, and I have long since learned never to underestimate the role of serendipity in entrepreneurship. So this piece of advice really spoke to me.
When Paul hires people, he looks for 4 things:
1. Bandwidth - people who get things the first time, can handle curve balls and are intellectually intense.
2. Attitude - people who are focussed on winning, with the focus tempered by humility, a hunger for excellence and genuine curiosity.
3. Experience - people with expertise he doesn't have. They don't necessarily need to have experience with the task they are being hired for, but as long as they have the bandwidth, attitude and a complementary skill set, they will be considered.
4. LODB - Lack of Dysfunctional Behavior. When employees start at Kayak, they need to promise Paul 2 things (a) be the best in the role they sign-up for, and (b) be an energy amplifier. I loved this, and this is the second time in my life I've heard this advice.
The other person who gave me this advice 9 years ago is someone I revere as a technology guru who personifies both virtues. These people bring out the very best in the people they're around, and inspire others to try and mirror their excellence and energy amplification. Brady Keays, thank you for your excellent advice to a young engineer nearly a decade ago. It has served me very well. Thank you Paul, for reinforcing the message!
When an employee promises Paul these 2 things, Paul in return promises:
(a) he will make the person more productive than they have ever been before and (b), When they look back in 20 years, Kayak will be the best job they've ever had in terms of fun, work environment and job satisfaction.
Paul succinctly summarized the importance of LODB (Lack of Dysfunctional Behavior) when hiring: Better to make a mistake and lose a good person than make a mistake and hire a dysfunctional person. The dysfunctional person will pull down the team.
On the topic of integrating a new employee into the company, Paul shared his philosophy: "If you have a really strong group of employees, a new hire maybe shy. So for the first 30 days, our team focuses on what they can learn from the new hire first before the new employee becomes used to the group's ways".
He then talked about the red phone in Kayak's office. Per Paul's description, this is a big ugly red phone with a loud and annoying ringtone. When a customer calls kayak, one of the engineers has to answer it and is forced to directly connect with the customer. If there's a bug, it's a great incentive to fix the bug before one more customer calls with a complaint! There's nothing like connecting an engineer with his customer to produce a quality product.
Paul's final piece of advice was this: founders can fall in love with their ideas and ears can become deaf to criticism. Therefore, it's good to put out an early prototype and have it trashed, rather than trying to build a perfect product and getting it out to customers. Mark it clearly as beta, and your reputation will be intact. Do not sell a final product you are not proud to stand behind.
That capped an evening filled with multiple nuggets of wisdom.
Kayak is the 4th company founded by Paul. He was introduced to his co-founder Steve Hafner of Orbitz by Joel Cutler at General Catalyst. Steve pitched Paul over a couple of beers. Steve knew the travel business and Paul knew technology, and neither were experts in the other's domain. Paul used this to make the point that when you meet someone, if you have instincts that this would be a fun person to work with or has the skills you don't, learn to listen to that instinct and act on it!
Paul then touched upon the topic of hiring people. He mentioned that his strategy is to *always* be recruiting. He is always tuned to "who has that thing I am looking for?", and keeps an eye open always. This sounded like excellent advice to me. Self-awareness is a must, especially for entrepreneurs who need to hire to complement their strengths, and I have long since learned never to underestimate the role of serendipity in entrepreneurship. So this piece of advice really spoke to me.
When Paul hires people, he looks for 4 things:
1. Bandwidth - people who get things the first time, can handle curve balls and are intellectually intense.
2. Attitude - people who are focussed on winning, with the focus tempered by humility, a hunger for excellence and genuine curiosity.
3. Experience - people with expertise he doesn't have. They don't necessarily need to have experience with the task they are being hired for, but as long as they have the bandwidth, attitude and a complementary skill set, they will be considered.
4. LODB - Lack of Dysfunctional Behavior. When employees start at Kayak, they need to promise Paul 2 things (a) be the best in the role they sign-up for, and (b) be an energy amplifier. I loved this, and this is the second time in my life I've heard this advice.
The other person who gave me this advice 9 years ago is someone I revere as a technology guru who personifies both virtues. These people bring out the very best in the people they're around, and inspire others to try and mirror their excellence and energy amplification. Brady Keays, thank you for your excellent advice to a young engineer nearly a decade ago. It has served me very well. Thank you Paul, for reinforcing the message!
When an employee promises Paul these 2 things, Paul in return promises:
(a) he will make the person more productive than they have ever been before and (b), When they look back in 20 years, Kayak will be the best job they've ever had in terms of fun, work environment and job satisfaction.
Paul succinctly summarized the importance of LODB (Lack of Dysfunctional Behavior) when hiring: Better to make a mistake and lose a good person than make a mistake and hire a dysfunctional person. The dysfunctional person will pull down the team.
On the topic of integrating a new employee into the company, Paul shared his philosophy: "If you have a really strong group of employees, a new hire maybe shy. So for the first 30 days, our team focuses on what they can learn from the new hire first before the new employee becomes used to the group's ways".
He then talked about the red phone in Kayak's office. Per Paul's description, this is a big ugly red phone with a loud and annoying ringtone. When a customer calls kayak, one of the engineers has to answer it and is forced to directly connect with the customer. If there's a bug, it's a great incentive to fix the bug before one more customer calls with a complaint! There's nothing like connecting an engineer with his customer to produce a quality product.
Paul's final piece of advice was this: founders can fall in love with their ideas and ears can become deaf to criticism. Therefore, it's good to put out an early prototype and have it trashed, rather than trying to build a perfect product and getting it out to customers. Mark it clearly as beta, and your reputation will be intact. Do not sell a final product you are not proud to stand behind.
That capped an evening filled with multiple nuggets of wisdom.
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