What a CEO Looks for When Hiring
Posted by Jason Spievak on Fri, Nov 02, 2012
We're doing a lot of hiring these days at RingRevenue. That's a good thing, of course. It means that we see great growth opportunities and that we have the resources to go after them.
But it also creates what I consider to be a high-class problem ... hiring great people is hard. Actually, to clarify, finding great people is hard. Once we find them, getting them fired up to join the RingRevenue team is easier. ;-) And if you'd like to learn more about the many awesome positions we have open here at RingRevenue, check out our jobs page.
In my experience, most great team members come from somewhere in your network. Recruiting is a bit like submitting your business plan to a VC. An occasional gem may make its way in over the transom, but you may never get to evaluating those. A reference from someone you know will typically go straight to the head of the class. We lavish the RingRevenue team members with juicy bonuses whenever we hire one of their friends.
Conferences, trade shows and university classes can also be a good source of high-quality candidates. For a variety of reasons, we love fresh college grads for sales, marketing and engineering roles. And, believe it or not, LinkedIn is a great source of candidates. Yes, it's true, part of the glamorous job as CEO involves spending some evenings searching through LinkedIn to find qualified candidates. We've hired this way.
Regardless of where you get your candidates from, I've learned that there are five criteria that are applicable to hiring for all roles. To be a member of the RingRevenue team, all five boxes need to be checked:
- Integrity. It's job one. If you can't trust the person, you can't rely on them. If you can't rely on them, you can't work with them. Any questions at all on this one are an immediate red card. Life's too short to spend it with dishonest people.
- Skills. Does this person actually have the skills to do what your company needs them to do. This is different than experience, which can be learned on the job. This is about ability, intelligence, judgment, and common sense. As they say in the NBA, you can't teach height.
- A success orientation. Sounds a little fuzzy, perhaps. But it's critical. There are, unfortunately, many among us who were raised to believe that they don't actually deserve success. That it happens to other people. That they might toil in anonymity to get the ball down to the one yard line, but that someone else will have to punch it in. We've carried some of those people into the end zone before. It's not pretty. If I can't visualize you rich and successful, you won't be on this team. The job is hard enough without bad mojo.
- Hunger. Past success is a good thing, but not too much. We want hungry people on our team. Who are ready to work hard. And who aren't embarrassed to say they're here for the win because they want to make life-changing money.
- Wing man/woman. Yes, we've had wins. Yes, we'll have more. But when you're joining a start-up, about the only guarantee is that you're going to spend a hell of a lot of time together. So, the last criterion is ... would you want to sit next to this person on an airplane for five hours?
All that said, don't forget your reference checks and background checks. We don't. We make lots of reference calls, including references we find on our own!
But I have a feeling that you touch all the bases. Seriously. Check out our
jobs page to see the awesome positions we have open here at RingRevenue. Check back often as we're posting new positions every week. If you're a rock star, we'd love to have you on our team.
Photo Credit: Google Images
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