John Lilly (of Greylock, previously CEO of Mozilla), recently wrote a post “Recruiting DNA“, in which he wrote about how early job experience shapes how you approach the world:

One of the things I’ve been really, really struck by is how significant the first 4 or 5 years of a person’s career seems to be on how they think and how they approach the world. It’s typically very easy to tell if someone started their career at Google or Apple or Microsoft or Paypal or a bunch of others, even when they’re 15 years into their career and well removed from that first job. You can just see it in the way they approach problems. These are gross simplifications and overgeneralizations, but Googlers tend to think about things in a data and machine learning sort of way. Amazon folk (Amazonians?) tend to think in terms of testing and yield. And other companies that shall remain nameless are notable in that their alumni have absurdly good PowerPoint skills. (Which, sadly, is not actually a positive indicator.)

John has talked to enough people to put some weight behind his oversimplifications and over-generalizations… But I think he has a point.  Phrasing it differently, each of these companies has certain “DNA” that has helped them be successful in their own way.  And what they are all particularly good at is teaching that methodology or DNA to the people they hire.  The most impressionable people they hire are the college graduates, freshly minted with their Computer Science (or similar) degrees.  I’d say John’s empirical observation fits.

John wrote in particular about Trilogy:

[...] the thing that imprinted most is an insane focus on recruiting insanely talented people. As a company, we were relentless about getting the smartest, most driven, most talented people we could. We were a tiny company, but going toe to toe with giants in on campus recruiting, for example — and I think we were probably about the best tech company at recruiting anywhere in the US in the mid-90s.

As one of the people who helped (in some small way) recruit John to Trilogy, I have to agree.  He was one of my friends from Stanford who told me “I don’t think I’d ever work for Trilogy” early in the recruiting process – but Trilogy had a relentless machine once talent was identified.  It just caused the company to get more creative about how to attract talent – giving John the opportunity to found the HCI (Human Computer Interaction) team at Trilogy and transform how software was being designed there. That HCI group has left a lasting impression on its members, and even on Austin, where quite a few of them still reside.  And there are at least two or three  “software UI/UX design firms” that were formed by alumni from the HCI group (I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more).

But as he says – the thing that imprinted most, was recruiting – both the importance of the process and the focus on talent.  After all, the interview is the tip of the spear.

Elliot Loh’s recent post “Management Begins at the Interview” (that link isn’t working, but this link takes you to the right page of his blog, it is the second post ) proposes that a co-founder be in every candidate’s interview process – to drive absorption of culture, mission, and philosophy of approach.  By doing this in the interview process, you achieve a few things:

1. You get their undivided attention
2. If they reject your thesis – your corporate culture and approach – they have enough information to get out before they get hired.  Help them self-select.
3. Equally, in a small company it is good for new hires to know the founder(s) are signing off on their hire.
4. Finally, it is important to have at least one consistent interview across as many candidates as possible.  It makes it easier to benchmark and pattern match good hires versus red or yellow flags that need to be explored.

Essentially, the interview is the tip of the spear for creating the kind of company you want to be a part of.  In a previous life, Elliot and I worked for a company that was maniacal about recruiting and recruiting process (and resulted in the start-up, CollegeHire, in which Elliot was a key influencer).  Where else could you do a couple hundred college graduate interviews every year, and still make time for the day job?

It was interesting to read his post and see some of the same takeaways that I have from that early experience.  At Tribe, Geni, and Yammer, it sounds like Elliot had ample opportunity to apply that philosophy.  Similarly, I had good opportunity to shape recruiting practices at Lombardi while I was there, building the technical services team from the ground up.

And now that I’m at bp3, we may not be hiring as aggressively as a venture-funded outfit would, but that just means we have all the more pressure to get it right when we make a hire.  And one thing I’ve learned: culture matters more than ability in the long run.  Some would argue the opposite.  But I can tell you – I can always find another person with the right abilities (or capabilities).  So I’ll take the one I can find that also has the right culture fit.  We tend to hire more experienced industry veterans at bp3, and so we don’t kid ourselves that we are going to remake an veteran’s work-life philosophy overnight.  We need to find people who are already in rough alignment.

One thing is for sure:  hiring great people is one of the most gratifying things you can do as a business owner.  Seeing them happy years into the job, that’s even more gratifying.