Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2013, when Tony Hsieh was CEO of Zappos. He stepped down in 2020 and died later that year.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, has an original way of making sure his company hires only people with a pleasant character.
These days, with companies so keen to attract the best talent and skills, Tony Hsieh says we shouldn’t forget that the most important thing when hiring is to bring onto your team people with strong human qualities, people you enjoy spending a large part of your time with.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hsieh revealed a technique, as curious as it is impressive, that the company uses to make sure it doesn’t hire someone rude or ill-mannered.
Hsieh says that most of the candidates who apply for a job there come from out of town, so Zappos has its own shuttle to pick them up at the airport and give them a tour of the city before taking them to the company, where they spend the rest of the day in job interviews.
At the end of the day, the recruiter always asks the shuttle driver how they were treated. It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable or professional the candidate is, or how well the interview went: if the driver says the candidate wasn’t polite, they are immediately ruled out.
Hsieh says that while there is some allowance for pressure and nerves, there is no excuse or reason for being discourteous or rude to a driver. Not to a driver, and not to anyone.
This method may seem innovative, but it is more widespread than you might think, and often taken much further. When we discussed the reasons for rejecting candidates that HR directors themselves had shared with us, some said that if they noticed a candidate leering at the secretary, they ruled them out.
Sometimes the interviewer mingles with the candidates in the waiting room, and other times it’s the waitress at the bar right next to the company who reports back to the recruiter. The truth is that the best analyst and predictor of human behaviour is a waiter, and if she is a woman, the prediction can be even more accurate.
Further reading
- 7 techniques for telling when someone is lying to you
- 9 body language mistakes that could cost you the job
Featured image: Nan Palmero, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
