One of the changes we made recently was to put in culture check teams to help us scale our interviewing process. As we add more and more team members it becomes difficult for the founders to personally interview everyone (although we still do it currently). Here’s how the culture check idea works:
- Teams of two people do culture checks together (we have two teams for a total of four people)
- People on a culture check team strongly embody our culture and can identify culture fit with candidates
- The culture check interview is only done at the very end of the process when the candidate is in the finalist stage
- The culture check interview isn’t for assessing domain expertise but for fit with core values (candidates that don’t make it through are great people that just don’t quit fit our culture)
Culture checks are working out well and we plan on expanding the number of teams as the number of people we’re hiring grows.
What else? What are your thoughts on culture checks for scaling in a startup?
David Cummings on Startups 