Hiring Homework

Find another human being with the right set of strengths, weaknesses, motivations, skills, and interpersonal skills for your specific team - while treading water. 

Hiring is hard. 

Homework helps. 

Before he applied as Door Dash President, Chris Payne signed up as Door Dash driver. The first-hand experience gave Payne the information he needed to suggest process improvements and he got the job. 

It was a good idea. Door Dash co-founder Tony Xu regularly assigned this homework to applicants: Take $20 and acquire 1,000 customers. 

Fidji Simo wanted a job at Facebook, so she designed a new product. Her spec integrated with Facebook’s other products: Ads, Groups, and Places. Simo was hired and later contribute to building a more developed product: Marketplaces. 

But here’s the thing about homework. 

It’s not about getting it right. 

Xu did not expect applicants to succeed. Instead, he looked at how hard they tried, how creative they got, and what they did. Those were the indicators of success.

Hiring is hard. 

Homework helps.

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