David Cummings on Startups

The Smile Factor

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David Cummings

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While reading the Delivering Happiness: A Movement post on TechCrunch, I came across a quote that really summarizes what we look for in new hires and epitomizes our corporate culture. In the article, when responding to the question about how Tony Hsieh hires such great people, Tony says, “I only hire people who smile.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up for us.

We focus on the following core values:

  • positive
  • self-starting
  • supportive

People who smile during their interview correlates nicely with our three core values.

What core values do you look for when hiring? How do you know you have a match?

Comments

3 responses to “The Smile Factor”

  1. Lance Weatherby Avatar
    Lance Weatherby

    Passion. I only hire people that can get excited about something. It can be anything, it does not matter if it work related or not. If they can get passionate about something, with the right management, they can get passionate about providing excellent service to customers. Simply ask them what they do for fun and see if they can light up with a little probing.

    Nice. Live by the golden rule. Smiling helps.

    Reply
  2. davidcummings Avatar
    davidcummings

    Thanks Lance. I absolutely agree that passion is important. I like to take Joel Spolsky’s “smart and gets things done” approach to hiring and add that they need to have a positive attitude. Life is too short to spend it with bad attitudes.

    Reply
  3. Strong Corporate Culture Doesn’t Mean Everyone is Best Friends « 10,000 Startup Hours – David Cummings

    […] Of course, it’s great when people are good friends with their co-workers, and we actively want that, but personality styles don’t always mesh and we’re most interested in smart people that get things done and have our same core values. […]

    Reply

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