Confession time – I’ve a terrible track record in job interviews. I hate them so much that I haven’t had a formal interview since December 2000 and plan never to have another. That last one was sobering, a second interview with First Derivatives in Newry on a drizzly Monday. I had to let Brian Conlon know I’d failed my PhD on the previous Friday. I wasn’t sure he heard me right so I didn’t labour the point.
Prior to that, I got knocked out in every interview process that involved any kind of ‘test’ or selection centre. Everything from Excel skills, programming, role plays, exams, and / or psychometric tests. The interviewers didn’t care that I had a decade or more hard practical experience farming, won the A-Level prize for academic achievement at a top grammar school, or just had an unusual appetite for hard work.
Safe to say, some of the unconventional hiring practices I’ve implemented (or even pioneered) over the years have come about as a result of these traumas.
During the early Wombat days, an interview would, more often than not, involve a couple of beers. My first key hires encompassed interview venues as diverse as the Errigal Inn on the Ormeau Road, the Elk Bar in Toome Bridge and the Yale Club on 5th Avenue. I initially decided to join forces with Ron Verstappen at Wombat after a mutual interview over a few bevies in the Old Castle Bar & Restaurant on West 54th Street. The meeting followed an introduction from Simon Goddard at Lehman Brothers.
Always one to build on a successful model, Auntie Annies on the Dublin Road and Ulysees on Stone Street in Lower Manhattan became the venues of choice for many future Wombat interviews, and especially for senior staff. My New York accountant would later maintain that I was the embodiment of the American Dream in that I met my business partner in a bar on 7th Avenue, just a few months “off the boat” and would go on to make my fortune.
Needless to say post-acquisition, the NYSE Euronext HR machine quickly quashed the practice. They were a little bit stiff (sorry Philippe!) and only saw the down side. Overall though, and despite the unconventional approach, the “Wombats” were recognised as the best brand of people in the sector since TIBCO’s heyday. Ten years on, there are a lot of SVPs and CXOs across the sector who made it through the process (I’ll not drop any names so as not to embarrass them). Brian Pyle leapt off the cliff and was last seen taking over the financial big data sector with Cloudera.
While the establishment in NYSE were not fans of the model, vindication came from the ancient Chinese. In a follow up to the Art of War, it was recommended that generals get potential officers drunk as part of the recruitment process, as they were more likely to reveal their true character.
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The interview venue wasn’t the only quirk of our recruitment process. We always placed much more stock in well-balanced resumes, and in particular, ensuring that academic achievement or technical experience was balanced against outside interests, key accomplishments and hobbies. It is my belief that people who were maybe involved in running a non-profit, a varsity athlete, or won a programming competition in their early teens tend to bring unique attributes to their work life. Many observers have noted that a disproportionate number of senior executives have ran a marathon or two at some point in their lives, and possess both persistence and the ability to see pain as a challenge. Travel is another key indicator for me. It is a must in our sector, so people with a genuine passion for it tend to overachieve. Here’s another: people with a part-time job at college, be it in retail or a bar, tend to be great at customer service.
In this respect we struggle with American resumes, as for some reason candidates tend to leave these key clues out entirely. Similarly, many recruiters in the UK strip out all this detail. Our retort is always that we are are hiring ‘people, not robots’ so the contextual information is fundamental. In many cases we’ve asked people with strong technical skills to resubmit their CV, stripped down to two pages, but with a lot more detail on activities and outside interests.
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Another cornerstone of my personal approach is to avoid technical interviews. Over the years I hired a very solid cross section of world-class technologists without ever asking a specific technology question. To be fair, a large number were referrals so came somewhat pre-screened, but beyond that, my firm belief is that the knowledge required to perform 90% of technical roles in this industry can be learnt on the job by someone with a solid base of technical experience.
Ultimately, the key factor isn’t previous experience but cultural fit and an openness to learn new things and aside from very niche roles, I focus on hiring for personality – even with techies.
In this respect, selection centres and all that go with them perturb me. KPMG recently announced that it had reduced its selection centres to one day from three. My question is: have these folks not already completed high school exams and successfully navigated University? What new information will yet another set of test results unearth? But maybe I’m missing the point.