Thursday, December 1st, 2011

5 Reasons Recruiting Is Like Dating

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As a member of the Box recruiting team, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what we look for in a candidate and why. Have you ever stopped to think about the similarities between dating and finding a new job? You might be shocked to learn the two are more similar than you might imagine – in fact, I’ve come up with 5 reasons why the screening process for dating and interviewing overlap rather amusingly:

  • Potential: Where does a candidate come from, what can we expect from them? A good indication of how your partner will turn out is their parents. Not
    only will you get a good idea of how kindly the years are going to treat them down the line, but more importantly, you’ll get a strong understanding of the values and expectations that were instilled in them. In a similar way, your performance throughout college gives us a fantastic idea of your potential for excellence and ambition to succeed. If you’ve thrived in an atmosphere where excellence is encouraged, then we know to expect great things from you.
  • Commitment: When you’re eyeing up a prospective partner, you want to know if they’re on the same page as you in terms of commitment. For example, you might look at their past relationships to get a sense of what you’re in for. Likewise, we want to know that a candidate has been involved with his past companies for a meaningful period of time. If he’s willing to flirt with us and join after a short fling with another company – we’ll only have ourselves to blame when he runs off with the first, younger start-up that gives him any attention.
  • Past: How much can you learn about someone by reading up about their exes? Is this the girl who’s got a fatal attraction to bad boys, or the guy who needs a high-maintenance girlfriend to feel good about himself? Most of all, no one wants to be a stepping-stone or rebound. We want a candidate who’s been involved in a high quality company, but is ultimately looking for a different kind of challenge. Sure, some people make mistakes, especially when they’re testing out the waters – but consistently bad choices are usually not a great sign.
  • Skill set:  What can your partner bring to the table that you need, and in turn, what can you offer? Ideally, an employee should bring skills that make them feel like an invaluable part of our team. They should be able to show off their skills while simultaneously appreciating the talents of their coworkers.
  • Interests: Does your potential partner have a life outside of your relationship, or will things get pretty stale pretty quickly? We all want someone who can introduce us to new things while also taking the time to learn about our interests. At Box, we want people who like to experiment with side projects, but also get excited about the work they do in the office.

Truth is, you really have to know a person very well if you want them to share in your aspirations and goals, and we know it isn’t easy to find that special candidate who shares perfect chemistry with us. That’s why we offer a $10k referral bonus to anyone who can recommend a successful engineering or technical operations hire to us. Just shoot us an email at referrals@box.net with your recommendation. How many of your friends would offer that much for finding them a mate? Our guess: Not many.

  • http://www.thewebexecutive.com Aidan A Bradley

    I also get paranoid about spinach between my teeth. I find IT recruiting is hard these days, because most people seem to stick around for 2 years or so in any one position or company. Are they flaky? Have they been fired? But on the other side, because I’m used to it, if I get a guy that’s worked the same job for 6 years, then I think “Well, his experience may be a little limited…”

    • Infrablu40

      Limited experience in what sense Aidan? a position in IT and of course depending on the company, won’t “limit” experience because as you know of the shortage of positions/cutbacks these last few years candidates are wearing different “hats”. Experience is rather gained not limited because they are not typically doing one task anymore. 6 years is a perfect tenure imho, it exhibits consistency and dedication and just a perfect length of time when burn eventually creeps in.