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How to (hire the best || never get laid off)

13 points by itchyouch ↗ HN
Employee/Employer relationships are the topics that come up with enough regularity across hackernews, reddit and other articles, but other than a couple of random nuggets of wisdom here and there, I never quite came across the fundamental rule to drive them all until today.

Most everyone focuses on the various strategies for weeding out people or specifics for getting noticed. Firm handshakes, interviews beginning with the receptionist, interviews being replaced with mini-projects, whiteboard coding, judging on appearance, punctuality etc etc etc. It's basically a big set of articles with various advice on how to tune the bayesian employee filter or get through them.

While useful, I think we haven't given enough attention to the real rule that underlies everything else.

Obviously, "best" for everyone is quite different, however I'd be willing to bet that there's one golden quality that consistently underlies those that most of us consider "awesome" co-workers or employees.

In the short essay, "A Message to Garcia," it underlines the qualities of the man that is so valuable that no employer can let them go. Ultimately, it's embodied in the man who can carry the message to Garcia.

http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/199th/ocs/content/pdf/Message%20to%20Garcia.pdf

It's a quick 5-10 minute read, but the story distills itself into being the person we describe as the "gets-shit-done-guy-without-complaining."

2 comments

[ 0.36 ms ] story [ 15.4 ms ] thread
pjnewton
This was required reading for me (and most others) while going through the Marine Corps officer training program... A great read and probably one of the core reasons to hire former members of the military (in my biased opinion) along with a handful of other reasons that can't be taught in school.

The officer selection program screens individuals for potential to lead and thrive in a variety of very stressful situations THEN once they've screened for top performers they assign them a job and train them how to do it.

A completely different process than most companies who expect all of their talent to show up with a very specific skill set. Unfortunately this leads to some amazing people being excluded for the talent pool because "it is too much work to train" someone. If one learns the traits to look for I'd guess that training them becomes a breeze and you'll end up with a better hire who will stick around in the long run.