I post constantly on how a central challenge is finding ways to not block talent from bouncing across challenging functional roles. For example, see here and here and here and here. This is from an interview of Mike Walrath Of Right Media in TechCrunch Founder Stories and is perhaps the best concise articulation that I have found about how to be forward-looking rather than backward-looking when hiring :
He says “I was never qualified for any job I got in my life.”
So his criteria for hiring is assessing:
- How fast a candidate can learn new things.
- How well a candidate can communicate.
- The candidate’s passion.
- And the ability of the candidate to evolve as she learns new information and new things, including in the short time of an initial conversation.
