RECRUITING
How do you recruit people? Where do you look? Where do you find your best people?
This proved a great problem - there was no ready tap of available people. No problems for entry level designers but I always struggled to find good technical writers who could grade up to facilitation. I needed the cognitive analytical horsepower to handle large information spaces but also the social skills to lead and facilitate. they appear not to go together often. I looked instead for more mature age people who have interesting backgrounds, and who are good at systems thinking. I feel that training for my kind of work would primarily be post graduate work. in a sense the best people i got were non technical - i.e. they had diverse backgrounds.

Do you have a recruiting process?
yes we tried this in the latter stages of our work. We looked for portfolio, did an interview and set them real tasks which were based on our work. They had deadlines to return the tasks but were not told they were deadlines - we are looking for people with initiative.

What are the three most important characteristics you look for in a person?
Cognitive ability - with a specific emphasis on systemic thinking ability leadership - the personality to lead and influence, show initiative, visionary Educative - i.e. the desire and ability to explain and make things simple. (task performance is in there somewhere too)

INTERVIEWING
Describe the interview process?
Probably covered in the above. interviews lasted about 2 hours. We asked them to talk through their portfolios first. then we asked them how they could contribute to us. we asked them to provide a resume of our company from their perspective - looking for their ability to read a client. then a role play. gave them a case study and asked them to question us as the clients for further information - looking for their research skills.

Do you have a standard list of interview questions? What are they? What do you hope to learn from each of these questions?
No

How do you determine the quality of a candidate's work? What tools have helped you consistently find quality employees? Are these standard in your industry? (for example: a portfolio, personal web sites, personality testing, storytelling, life themes, etc.)
no substitute for getting them to do a task for us which is real. It can be real-time or historical. this gives their ability to work under pressure, and to do our kind of work. we also liked to give people a trial in a sub contracting situation.

HIRING
Describe your dream candidate in terms of fitting into your company's culture.
My dream candidate was real. a young guy called (coincidentally) tony. he started with us young. He used to anticipate and finish tasks before you could ask him to do it. e.g. he would sit in meeting and take notes, begin to compose the material you were planning, you would ask tony could you do this? and he would say - its already done. very thoughtful - very reflective but also a performer. lovely combination of arts and sciences. creative and dramatic but also disciplined and analytical. my only demurral was his poor dress sense. we are loose and creative, informal and not pretentious, he fitted in really well. he realized that he had to make his own destiny with us.

What is the most important influence in deciding to hire someone? Is it their references, their resume, the reputation of their school, etc.?)
references are high on the list. but mainly any evidence we have of their work, and their reputation with clients.

How do you identify if someone's work style or work process is compatible with your corporate culture?
discomfort with the ambiguity of our work is a telltale sign that they don't fit. failure to self organize - and criticizing us for not organizing them. fear of marketing. take too long to complete tasks. too much of a time clock driven behavior - "its time to go home" - rather than going the second mile for clients. failure to attend team meetings.

Can you tell me a brief story about a surprising interview? Something unexpected that revealed important information about someone; an event, behavior or response that exceeded your expectations as an indicator of that persons traits and abilities; maybe something that has since changed your process of assessment.
I hired a guy who I thought was going to be great but he let me down and caused us great angst. he was full of excuses and was attracted to us by the reflective nature of our business but he never got the achievement culture. this humbled me and I realized that task performance in unsupervised conditions is the key to hiring. I then made a mental pact that I would always set people live tasks and see how they perform in them. The key indicator was that they were a good talker but a poor performer.

--Tony Golsby-Smith