Hiring right: The one question which makes all the difference
TLDR; The most important question to ask the candidate during their interview is what their dream is, or where they see themselves in five years. Their dream should be what ties them to the company and its goals, not the pay or the money.
Recently I’ve gotten the pleasure of interviewing people for hiring purposes. I just started a few months ago. After doing a few interviews and hiring some really good people, I felt something was amiss. We had hired people of great coding abilities and no doubt that fit the criteria of a good hire. But, something still seemed off, something I couldn't quite place my finger on.
A few months and a few episodes of One Piece later, I realized while watching the anime that what really makes a pirate crew a great crew is what works for companies as well. To all those unfamiliar with the anime, I don't watch a lot of anime but there are two or 3 I can say without a doubt are masterpieces. Out of those, one is “One Piece”.
Back to my original point, A pirate crew is similar to a corporation. Not the stealing from people part, we do fair work here. What makes a pirate crew truly pirate? The gold, the plundering? Nope! Its the spirit of free-roaming the oceans without anyone's control. The people of the crew aren't hired they are recruited.
At one point during the show, Usopp says something along the lines of “Do what you can!” to Chopper. What had happened, was, Chopper had just joined the crew and he didn't know what to do in a battle and how to be brave like everyone else. Usopp gave him this piece of advice and that's something which stuck with me too. People cant be expected to be good at what they do unless they give their all and do what they can, when they can.
Then again, how do you really make people give their all? “By believing in the company of course.” someone might say with the same naive state of mind I had not so long ago. You cant make people believe in the company. You can make them feel proud of it but you can't make them work for the sole reason that they want to see the company flourish. Doesn't happened. Not to my knowledge. But exceptions exist to each rule. Some people really do believe in the cause and these people are the people that the company should try to retain with all its might, nothing drives you through hard times better than faith.
People are complex beings, yet their complexity is that they are so simple it's unfathomable. To that essence the real driver I found which drives pirate crews (and even great future masters of the trade) is the sheer urge to be the best at what you do. The company doesn't need your beliefs, it needs your dedication. And dedication is something that you always have towards your dreams. Your goals, the personal goals should tie you to the company and they should be your drivers. You do what you do because you want to be better at it, not because it will get you more pay but because it will bring you one step closer to achieving your goal.
That was the mindset I entered the software industry with. I’m an electrical engineer and a decent one at that. I worked with everything and anything practical I could, so now I know how to build machines. I became good at making stuff work. I could figure out problems, think on their workarounds for days until I had that one eureka moment while driving, taking a bath or doing the most mundane of tasks. Obsession is a quality which dreams befriend.
When I joined the company I had no idea what full-stack even meant. All I knew is I would be building web apps. During my 4 years degree, I had realized that hardware is nothing without software. Software is what gives control to the user and no one want to buy something they can't monitor or control. The software was more essential to hardware than most people realized. During these 4 years, my multiple attempts to learn HTML had failed. I simply wasn't focused enough. So when the company gave me the opportunity I jumped at it.
I learned at a pace slower than others, but I learned it deep. I understood each word because I knew that to build the best web app, as a software, for my hardware, I had to be the best at building these web apps. I did it for my reasons and for my goals and for my dream, the dream to build consumer-grade products that not only improve but revolutionize people’s lives. The dream needed me to learn web applications, so I did. I also needed to learn deployment so when I got the chance to do that I leaped at it as well, hence I learned Nginx and some apache. When I got the chance to learn of a better way to deploy in production, I dived headfirst into that too, that is why I know some docker as well.
The reason I learned wasn't because of fear of falling behind but because of the excitement of reaching my goal. That is something I couldn't see in a few of these new hires. That was the spark they were missing. Hence the most important question to ask the candidate during their interview is what their dream is, or where they see themselves in five years.
Happy Hiring!
