What do you look for when you hire?

July 15, 2010July 14, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Attitude, enthusiasm, and good manners.

Lots of people are smart. Lots of people have gone to the right schools and have worked in the right jobs. Lots of people know how to answer when you ask how many tennis balls fit into a phone booth or why railroads tracks are often built next to rivers (two favorite consulting interview questions I actually got years ago, meant to test analytic ability).

Attitude, to me, is a combination of humility, perseverance and a willingness to learn. So many smart people are taught that (a)They have all the answers; (b)They’ve been asking the right questions. The difference-makers understand that they’re good at a bunch of things and that they (everyone, really) have an awful lot to learn, often from the most surprising places.

Enthusiasm is about the energy you bring to tasks, big or small, about willingness to start things and see them through to the end. Plus it’s generally a lot more fun to be around enthusiastic people since their enthusiasm is contagious – so the spillover effects for the whole team are huge.

And good manners is a great proxy for being brought up right, for treating everyone around you with respect, for caring about the important things more than what’s on the surface. So much of life is about relationships, and someone who walks through the world with a respect that comes from a deep and genuine place will build those relationships successfully.

Sure, this isn’t the complete list of traits, but if any of them is missing, it’s probably a non-starter.

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I’m hiring

February 18, 2009February 18, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 34 Comments

I’m looking for someone great to join my team at Acumen Fund. I’m looking for a great marketer — a storyteller, a tribe-builder, someone who knows how to connect with people in a real and genuine way and help them to be part of something big…and who at the same time is ready to roll up their sleeves with data and numbers and analytics and web 2.0 tools.

We’re living through an amazing, challenging time. We have a financial meltdown on one hand, and a new U.S. President brought to power on a wave of change from below on the other. This is a tremendous opportunity. The time is ripe to create a step change in terms of awareness, excitement, and membership in Acumen Fund’s community of supporters and advocates – from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands…and someday millions of people who believe that markets and entrepreneurship have a central role to play in the global fight on poverty.

I need someone to help us make this happen. You might be a great blogger or an old-school marketer with lots of new tricks up your sleeves. But either way you bring off-the-charts passion, energy, commitment, and humility to this roll.

You can read the full job description on this Squidoo lens. The boiled-down version is: you’re probably either a super-duper marketer who knows how to use online tools, or you’re world-class with online tools and also have got some great marketing ideas. If you’re neither of these things, this job probably isn’t for you.

Please spread the word to people who might be interested. I’m excited to see who will apply for this role.

The core skill of innovators

February 9, 2009February 9, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

In reflecting on how we create innovation in the social sector, I came across this great talk by Randy Nelson of Pixar University. He starts off by describing the problem NASA had: when they were looking to hire someone to walk on the moon, they faced the problem that no one was deeply qualified for that job.

If you want people to do new things, he asks, how do you screen for that? One of the many money quotes in this talk: “The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”

I love it.

And, by the way, this mindset is not, generally speaking, how the nonprofit sector (NGOs and funders both) thinks about itself. We need more risk takers.

Other thoughts he shares on what he looks for:

1. Depth. Preference for the “proof of a portfolio rather than the promise of a resume.”

2. Breadth. “We want someone who is extremely broad…we want someone who is more interested than they are interesting.”

3. Communication. “Communication involves translation….do the translation at the sending end so it doesn’t have to be translated at the receiving end.” (techie to artist communication, for example)

4. Collaboration. “The amplification you get by connecting up a bunch of human beings who are listening to each other; interested in each other; bring separate depth to the problem….”

How to find great people to do new things and who can translate from one world to another. That certainly sounds like the kind of thing we should know more about in the social sector.

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