Steve Jobs on Hiring

A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. The best people don't want to work with mediocre people — so every bad hire is a double loss: you get someone mediocre AND you drive away the great people.

A players hire A players. B players hire C players. If you let B players in, you start a death spiral. The company fills up with C players, then D players, and pretty soon mediocrity is the culture.

I've always believed hiring is the most important thing a CEO does. I probably spent 20% of my time recruiting — even when Apple had 30,000 employees. If you get the people right, everything else follows.

Jobs would deliberately challenge candidates by telling them their ideas were terrible — even if he thought they were great. He wanted to see if they'd cave to authority or defend their thinking with conviction. People who folded were out.

At Apple, a typical hiring process involved meeting with the hiring manager, then several team members the candidate would work with directly. Jobs wanted everyone who'd work with the person to have a say — not a vote, but input.

Can you explain what you do to a 10-year-old? If you can't simplify it, you don't understand it well enough.

Tell me about the best thing you've ever made. Why was it great?

Why do you want to work here?

Passion. Can they not shut up about the thing they built? Do their eyes light up? The best people Jobs hired were the ones who talked about their work the way artists talk about their art.

People who push back on him during the interview. Jobs respected people who stood their ground. If he said 'that's a terrible idea' and you explained why it wasn't — calmly, with evidence — you passed the real test.

People who only talked about features and specs, never about the user experience. Jobs wanted people who thought about how things felt, not just how they worked.

Candidates who tried to impress with complexity. If someone's answer to a simple question was a 10-minute technical monologue, that was a sign they couldn't think clearly.

Someone who can't name a product they love and articulate exactly why they love it. If you don't have strong opinions about what makes things great, you won't make great things.

Watch what happens when you push back on their best idea. Do they immediately agree with you? That's a problem — they'll agree with every stakeholder too. Do they get angry? Also a problem. The ones you want engage, ask a question back, and make their case better.

Listen to whether they talk about craft or career. 'This project advanced my skills in X' is different from 'this project got me promoted.' Jobs wanted people motivated by the work itself.

When someone is really great at what they do, they know they're great — and they don't need you to validate it. Look for quiet confidence, not insecurity masked as arrogance.

If you're not sure about someone, don't hire them. Your gut is pattern-matching on thousands of data points your conscious mind can't articulate. When in doubt, pass.

Never settle for a 'good enough' hire because you need the headcount filled. Leaving a seat empty costs you less than filling it with the wrong person. A bad hire is six months of damage plus six months of cleanup.

Take candidates for a walk. Get them out of the conference room. People are more honest and more themselves when they're moving. Some of Jobs's best interviews happened on walks around Apple's campus.

Introduce the candidate to people they'd work with informally — in the hallway, over coffee. Watch how they interact when it's not a 'formal interview.' The mask comes off when they think they're not being evaluated.