HIRING POLICIES OF GREAT ORGANISATIONS

Business is People

"A company is only as good as the people it keeps." George Jenkins, Publix

“A worn out phrase says 'People are our company's most important asset.' It is also wrong - the right people are the most important asset.” Percy Barnevik

“The foremost detail to be addressed by ANY service organization is not the product or process, it's the People. Absolutely. Positively.” Fred Smith, founder Fedex

“If you don’t have good players, you aren’t going to win.” Jim Haslam, Pilot Flying J

“In my experience, a high-morale group, properly motivated and incentivized, can out-perform a low-morale peer group by a factor of 5x or more. The typically untapped, latent potential of human beings is stunning, and can be reliably unleashed by the right cultural framework.” Peter Kaufman, Glenair

“Your main mistake in business is people. Your main triumphs and successes are because of people. So getting the people right, getting the judgment of the people and making sure you have the right people on the team is really, really critical.” Brad Jacobs

“I guess probably the most important principle of the whole is to recognize that successful organizations have successful, good people.” Hunter Harrison, Canadian Pacific

“Great companies have one thing in common – great people.” Henry Bloch, founder H&R Bloch

“The first and most important decision in one's success is carefully choosing the people who will surround you.” Jon Huntsman, Huntsman Corporation

Hire Smarter

“Surrounding yourself with dwarfs does not make you a giant.” Yiddish Folk Saying

“It’s very important to surround yourself with people who are better than you are.” Warren Buffett

“I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’” Andrew Carnegie

“Charlie and I know that the right players will make almost any team manager look good.  We subscribe to the philosophy of Ogilvy & Mather’s founding genius, David Ogilvy: ‘If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But, if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.’” Warren Buffett

“I understood that it was not important for me to be good at everything, but to have people around that were better, smarter and knew more about different things than I did, and my job was really to create an environment where great people could really perform, and that’s what we try to do. Try to have fair pay practices, share credit and share equity and build a team, and I found for us that worked extraordinarily well. We had a phenomenal record.” Robert Rosenberg

“We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates.” David Ogilv, Ogilvy & Mathers

“Surround yourself with people smarter than you.” Alan McKim, Clean Harbors

“The only really smart thing about me is that I know enough to hire men who are smarter than I am." Charles R Walgreen Sr., founder Walgreens

“The smartest thing I do as a CEO is to make sure that most of the people I hire are smarter than I am.” Brad Jacobs

“Surround yourself with stars, you'll be a star. Surround yourself with turkeys, you're going to get sliced up for Thanksgiving dinner.” Joe Scarlett, Tractor Supply

“The best thing to ever do as a leader is to hire people who are smarter than you are.” David Congdon, Old Dominion

“I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.” Lee Iacocca, Ford

“We hired the best we could hire. I still believe in that. I’m not afraid of hiring people who can do everything better, and so I had a lot of great people around me that I still rely on daily.” Dianne Hendricks, ABC Supply

“I've always tried to hire people who are smarter than I am. I ask a lot of questions and listen to their suggestions. You should, too.” J W Marriott

“Every time that we go out to find someone, we try to get a person who is a little better, and a little better, and a little better, and a little better. Because that’s the way you build an organization.” Hyatt Brown, Brown & Brown

"All too often, when someone makes it to top management or reaches a similar position of power, they fail to hire anyone smarter than themselves for fear of exposing their own incompetence." Paul Van Doren, Vans

“I very much followed the advice of Andrew Carnegie who said he wanted as his epitath ‘here lies a man wise enough to bring into his service men wiser than he.’ I would emphasise men or women. I had very smart people as my partners, I shared the loot with them equitable and I benefitted from their expertise.” Leon Cooperman

"I've made a policy of trying to hire people who are smarter than I am." Ed Catmull, founder Pixar

“‘Surround yourself with the best people. People are the most valuable asset in in any company,’ Henry Bloch says. That's why he tried to hire individuals who were smarter than him.” Thomas Bloch, H&R Block

“An entrepreneur who is afraid to hire people who can do something better than he can is doomed.” Charles Schwab

"Why have I been successful my whole life? Because I've always surrounded myself with people who are better than I am." Arthur Blank, founder Home Depot

“[The Navy taught me the greatest lesson of my life…] no matter how smart you think you are, there’s always someone who’s smarter. No matter how good you are, there’s always someone better. I vowed that when I got out of the Navy and went into business, I would search out and hire exactly those people. So if they were the head of sales, they would sell better than me. If they were a copywriter, they would write better copy. They all had to be better. I would respect and celebrate their abilities and never be threatened by them. This belief would play an enormous role in the growth of Estée Lauder and help us build a company of the greatest people in the world.” Leonard Lauder

“When you get to this size, you grow through the talent of others - people I have attracted through the years who make my job look easy. I divided the tasks among other people more skilled in their areas than I am, and I trust them to do the job well.” S. Truett Cathy

“I was an average football player who was blessed to play on some fantastic teams. This taught me early on about the importance of surrounding yourself with people more talented than yourself, a lesson that would prove invaluable in business.” Jim Haslam, Pilot Flying J

“I’ve never kidded myself. Our business really began to perk when I hire people smarter than me. Often, all I had to do was get out of their way. When you find these great people, they make your dreams come true, and then they go beyond your dreams. If you don’t care who gets credit, you can get anything done.” Barnett Helzberg

“If you want to be promoted, you have to find someone better than you to do your job because what lifts other people lifts you.” Jim Henderson, Brown & Brown

Pick the Best

"You form alliances with the smartest people you can, and then you let them go. I get to take credit for it. And I've done nothing but getting out of the way." Ken Moelis

“I do not wish to be egotistical, but if I have had any ability it has been in the selection of good generals as managers of the little business that I started. It was a little business. It commenced with a five-cent nickel piece.” F.W Woolworth

“Good banking is the result of good management: and good management comes from hiring the best men that can be had in any particular field. That is the secret of success of the bank .. picking the best talent and paying what it is worth.” A.P Giannini, founder Bank of America

“Surround yourself with the smartest and best people you possibly can. Let them do their thing. Don’t sit on top of them. If they’re smarter than you, all the better.” Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies

“The best advice I would give to people about recruitment is ‘always pick the best.’’ Peter Hargreaves, Hargreaves Lansdown

“The gathering together of brainy executives I have always regarded as one of the most important parts of my job. I have always kept my eyes wide open for sprouting talent. For example, one youth caught my eye; I watched him as he developed into a lawyer; and then, when I figured he was ripe, I got him to become one of us. You can’t afford to sit back and wait for talent to come to you. You have to be constantly on the lookout for it and then go out and lasso it.” A.P Giannini, founder Bank of America

“The high talent density at Netflix is the engine that drives Netflix success.” Reed Hastings, founder Netflix

“Hire 10’s whenever you can. They are proactive about sensing problems, designing solutions, and taking a business in new directions. They also attract and hire other 10s. You can always build something around a 10.” Steven Schwarzman, Blackstone

“With our dispersed decision-making model, if you pick the very best people and they pick the very best people (and so on down the line) great things will happen. Ted Sarandos calls this the ‘hierarchy of picking’ and it’s what a workforce built on talent density is all about.” Reed Hastings, Netflix

“Great companies are built with great people. When I got into this business, I decided that I'm no genius, so I need to hire the very best people. They make the company the kind of place where they don't want to go anywhere else. They want to stay here and help build it.” Barclay Simpson, founder Simpson Manufacturing

“Walgreen sought to hire the best people available for every opening he had, utterly unthreatened by talented underlings. He had a keen eye for ability and character, and he had enough humility to help it flourish in his company.” John Bacon, Walgreens

“In terms of culture, we told our employees that we hire the smartest people we can find and that we have no more of them around than necessary.” Tom Murphy, Capital Cities

“As a manager, I always put a premium on hiring the smartest people we could find, and not having any more people than we absolutely needed. Also, we’re not in a high-tech business, so I always went for brains more than I did for experience. By and large, it worked. We always had enough people around who could teach the mechanics of the business or anything like that. There’s no substitute for people with brains who are willing to work hard.” Tom Murphy, Capital Cities

“Hire the best people that you can. And don't add staff members until you definitely have a need for them.” Stef Wertheimer, Iscar

“I busted my butt to hire first-class people and make the success of the business their success, through various ways.” Barclay Simpson, Simpson Manufacturing

“I'm not a micro manager. I just hire the best people and make sure they are well trained, especially in the culture, and then I leave them alone. The quickest way to go out of business is to delegate to the wrong people. So we make sure we have the right people and they come to work for us for all the right reasons. They want to work under that mission statement of saving the planet. I just leave them alone.” Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia

“I knew that if I were to emerge victorious in this war of the knife (or the scissors!) I had to be equipped with a first-class état-major, or general staff.” Christian Dior

“We get the best class of people to come with us. Mr. Rockefeller, of the Standard Oil Company, says that success depends upon the selection of the right people. We endeavor to select men who have been successful in other lines of business.” John Patterson, founder NCR

"When you’re looking at great sports teams, they’re often the teams that can pay high for the best players. We want to have the absolute best players and compensation is one part of that. We’d rather have three outstanding people than four OK people." Reed Hastings CEO Netflix

“Perhaps the greatest challenge I foresee is our ability to continue to find good people. The quest for human capital is extremely important.” Hyatt Brown, Brown & Brown

Character

“One further point in our CEO selections: I never look at where a candidate has gone to school. Never!” Warren Buffett

“There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business—or in the game of life. There are, basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference, I am convinced, is character." Jon Huntsman

“One friend of mine said that in hiring they look for three things: intelligence, energy, and character. If they don’t have the last one, the first two will kill you because, it’s true, if you are going to hire somebody that doesn’t have character, you had really better hope they are dumb and lazy, because, if they are smart and energetic, they’ll get you in all kinds of trouble.” Warren Buffett

“We do not have anybody around Berkshire that makes us nervous.” Warren Buffett

“I think partly we look smart because we pick such wonderful people to be our partners and our associates, even our employees.” Warren Buffett

"When you have able managers of high character running businesses about which they are passionate, you can have a dozen or more reporting to you and still have time for an afternoon nap. Conversely, if you have even one person reporting to you who is deceitful, inept, or uninterested, you will find yourself with more than you can handle." Warren Buffett

“John Loudon recently told me, ‘In choosing men to head countries for Shell, I have always thought that character is the most important thing of all.’ To compromise with this principle sometimes looks expedient, short term. But it can never do Ogilvy & Mather any permanent good.’ David Ogilvy

“It is simple…trust first, ability second.” Charlie Munger

“We hire based on values first – then talent.” Charles Koch

“In selecting our staff we look first at their human qualities and then at their degrees.” Stef Wertheimer, founder Iscar

“I learned from my mentors always to look for character, values and people skills. Hire someone who is not only a good fit for the job but, equally important, a good fit for the company culture.” Bennett Helzberg

“Trustworthiness is more important than the brains. It’s not that they don’t have the brains, but we wouldn’t hire anybody, no matter how able, if we didn’t trust them.” Charlie Munger

"[MBM places a great focus] on culture and on hiring based not just on skills but on virtues, with the goal of ensuring our businesses and leaders foster integrity, courage, compliance and respect." Charles Koch

“The four qualities I seek in every hire: intelligence, hunger, integrity, and collegiality. If a candidate is deficient in any one of these four, that's a risk I don't take. If I find someone who scores high in all four qualities, and has the skills for the role, I snap them up.” Brad Jacobs

“Having skills and intelligence is important, but we can hire all the brightest MBA’s in the world, and if they don’t have the right values, we will fail. Therefore, we hire based on values first – then talent.” Charles Koch

“When hiring or promoting, Musk made a point of prioritizing attitude over résumé skills. And his definition of a good attitude was a desire to work maniacally hard.” Walter Isaacson

“You may find this odd, but when hiring managers, I never ask to see their GPAs or inquire as to their class standings. I don't care to know their academic majors. Be assured, I examine a person's background, but only in search of signs of integrity, commitment, and courage. I want to know the character of the person I am about to put at my side, and it's not hard to spot.” Jon Huntsman, Huntsman Corporation

“Associate yourselves only with those people you can be proud of whether they work for you or you work for them.” S Cathy Truett, founder Chick-fil-A

"Bill and Sheldon set out to add more members to their sales force, they made a point to look for candidates with integrity and a commitment to customer satisfaction." R.C Willey

“The difference is that Nordstrom is dedicated to hiring people who are already nice and already motivated to do a good job - before they apply for a job.” Robert Spector

“The trick to delivering superior hospitality was to hire geniune, happy, optimistic people.” Danny Meyer

“When we hire we prioritise curiosity and open-mindeness above all else.” Baillie Gifford

“Have you ever tried to take someone who is not nice and motivated and magically make them nice and motivated? It can't be done. And yet, so many organizations believe that - with initiatives or training or slogans or catch phrases they can change a person's inherent nature.” Robert Spector, Nordstrom

“Finding the right employees. Successful loyalty-based businesses tend to be as selective in their choice of hires as they are in their choice of customers. They look for people with character who share the company’s values, recruits with the talent and skills to achieve the levels of productivity that make for satisfying, long-term careers.” Frederick Reichheld

“We work hard to hire people who have a customer service gene - that is the 'enthusiastically human' component. We also want people with deep technical literacy.' David Tudehope, Macquarie Technology

“What’s critical is the types of people we are most interested in: people who like service, who believe in the service ethic, because I’m a firm believer that you need to make sure that the people you hire are aligned with the values, the beliefs and the strategies of the company.” Kenneth Chenault, Amex

“To ALDI, the right character is generally more important than, say, a degree from Harvard: none of our executives are from McKinsey; no one boasts any other kind of exclusive background.” Dieter Brandes

"Character and work ethic carried more weight than resumes. Bill took the same approach with each new employee he bought on board - more than anything he wanted people who were committed to customer service. In the retail business, the rest could be learned." Bill Child, R.C Willey

"When I look at people [to employ] I look at them in three dimensions: values, abilities and skills. Most companies hire for skills, I believe it should be the other way around. I look at their values .. skills is least important." Ray Dalio, Bridgewater

“In selecting people, one of the things is that you select people for character, for judgement and for capacity to work in complexity. But it all starts with character. There will always be turbulence, so you need to figure out who you want to be on the boat with.” Reece Duca

“Bad habits are even tougher to break when it comes to character issues [ie good values]. I didn't kid myself into thinking that just because a player had great athletic talent, I could change his bad habits in these most important areas. I believe effective leadership is very cautious about bringing bad habits into the group. More often than not, before you can break their bad habits, they have taught those habits to others on your team.” John Wooden

“Character is not taught easily to adults who arrive at your desk lacking it. Be cautious about taking on ‘reclamation projects’ regardless of the talent they may possess.” John Wooden

“The biggest mistake in general that I've made, and I'm trying to correct for that, is to put too much of a waiting on somebody's talent and not enough on their personality. I think it actually matters whether somebody has a good heart.” Elon Musk

“From the beginning, when George Merchele selected and trained his own crew, the choice of proper agents was considered of utmost importance. In the old days no lightning-rod salesman need apply. Although the methods used today are far more scientific than they were then, the same basic principle guides – good character.” State Farm, ‘The Farmer from Merna’

"Integrity, morals, honesty [are the] the top qualifications. You have to be knowledgeable about your job, but I would rather have a man who knew nothing about his job but have him honest and moral. Then he could learn the job." Joe Blanton, Publix

“We expect individuals to be good at what they do, but excellence is not enough. We look for people who are thoughtful about the world around them and the people in it. We look at how they treat people at a dinner table or in a taxi ride, the people they may not see again. You can learn a lot about a person's character by observing behaviors in everyday circumstances.” Henry Kravis, KKR

Passion /Attitude

“If I had to choose between someone who had great talent but was short on grit and desire, and another player who was good but had great determination and drive, I would always prefer the latter. The former might work well for a brief period, but they never have the staying power that gives a great club stability and consistency.” Sir Alex Ferguson

“What matters most: passion or competence that was inborn. Berkshire is full of people who have a passion for their business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power.” Charlie Munger

“I have never met a successful person who did not express love for what he did and care about it passionately.” Don Keogh, Coca Cola

“A college degree has never been a requirement at Nordstrom. For frontline salespeople, enthusiasm, a desire to work hard, and a capacity to generate their own traffic are much more important in a system that can best be described as a process of natural selection- a purely Darwinian survival of the fittest. As Blake Nordstrom has noted, ‘You can't teach a work ethic.” Robert Spector, Nordstrom

“I also find that it’s important to look for great “athletes.” I don’t mean people with experience in a particular “sport” as much as I mean an overall great “athlete.” In other words, I look not so much for people with expertise in a particular subject as for people who get passionate about what they do, are analytical, achievement oriented, persuasive, communicate well, and want to get stuff done. I look for a core set of personal talents. When you get people with this set of talents and put them in the right environment, they’ll learn and grow and, often, they’ll turn into great entrepreneurs. If you’re recruiting for experience…putting checks in boxes next to lists of what they’ve been done...that’s not really as useful as looking into the core set of talents someone possesses.” Scott Cook, Intuit

“When hiring or promoting, Elon Musk made a point of prioritizing attitude over résumé skills. And his definition of a good attitude was a desire to work maniacally hard.” Walter Isaacson

“Don’t ever doubt, in the customer service business, the importance of people and their attitudes.” Herb Keller, founder Southwest Airlines

“We had spent a quarter century or more developing what we considered the strongest culture in our industry – first by hiring more for attitude than experience, later by establishing career paths and promotion from within.” Isadore Sharp, founder Four Seasons

“In my view, people overemphasize experience at the expense of smart, young and energetic.” Nick Howley, Transdigm

“From 2002 Copart was going to be a company that didn’t just hire based on skill-sets or IQ. It was going to hire based on attitude – EQ. We were going to be a company in which people liked their co-workers and had fun at what they did.” Willis Johnson, founder Copart

“Most of the people I hired from within the community were athletic, educated, and had a healthy West Coast approach to living. They withstood the growing pains as we morphed from entrepreneurial to professional, growing and shining. It was a synergy thing – one plus one equals three. Lululemon would never have achieved what it did without these initial core players.” Chip Wilson, founder Lululemon

“If we were simply box-ticking, the logical thing for us to do as retailers would be to seek out red-hot salespeople. But we don’t. The most important quality we look for in a recruit is friendliness: we need staff who can not only talk to customers, but who can listen to what they say. Passion and enthusiasm are important too. We like applicants who are enthusiastic about the products we sell, about dealing with customers, and about life in general. Overall, our policy is to hire for personality and train for skill.” Julian Richer

‘USAA recruits former military officers for most of its executive positions, which helps it stay current and well-informed on customer lifestyles and problems.’ Frederick Reichheld

“Tractor Supply has a history of hiring its customers.” Tractor Supply

"Rising sales enabled me to hire more and more reps. Most were ex-runners, and eccentrics, as only ex-runners can be. But when it came to selling they were all business. Because they were inspired by what we were trying to do, and because they worked solely on commission (two dollars a pair), they were burning up the roads, hitting every high school and college track meet within a thousand-mile radius, and their extraordinary efforts were boosting our numbers even more." Phil Knight, founder Nike

“Academic degrees are not what make a true entrepreneur. Rather, the key is in the love of work, experience, and initiative.” Stef Wertheimer, founder ISCAR

Team Players

“The star of every successful team is the team. Individuals don’t win games, teams do.” John Wooden

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” Steve Jobs

“Seek players who will make the best team rather than the best players. Astute leadership understands the chemistry of teams and organisations. Often the most talented individuals will not be as good for your group. Be alert to overall impact - chemistry.’ John Wooden [considered the greatest NCAA basketball head coach of all time]

“We are not a constellation of individual “star” employees: that idea would work against my core belief that hospitality is a team sport.” Danny Meyer, Union Square Hospitality

“One brilliant character who does not put team first can destroy the entire team.” Satya Nadella

Train the Skill

“I needed people who had the right attitude, rather than people who simply knew about the business. After all, skills and knowledge can be taught but attitude can’t.” Guy Hands, founder Terra Firma

“Hire for attitude, train for skill.” Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines

"Most of the time, they find us. We can hire nice people and teach them to sell, but we can't hire salespeople and teach them to be nice. We believe in hire the smile, train the skill?" Robert Spector, Nordstrom

“When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.” Elon Musk

“Motivation expert Zig Zigler has said that among the top twenty-five attributes companies look for in an executive, not one of them deals with experience. Character traits are most important. Everything else can be learned.” Cathy S Truett, founder Chick-fil-A

“Our philosophy, then and now, is that we can teach someone the fundamentals of our business. What we really want is someone with good values.” Jim Clayton, founder Clayton Homes

“High performance characteristics are necessary, but we may compromise on this factor when hiring and during promotion review, since we can teach the technical skills required for high-level performance. But values are a different story. My experience tells me that high moral and ethical values can't be taught. Team members or candidates either have them or don't. I do realize that we can bring in a thief, and if everyone is honest, and we keep the safe locked, they are not likely to steal not for a time. They will, though, at some point. It's difficult to terminate individuals who are high performance but have low values. Most likely, a supervisor without this training wants to compromise and salvage the high performance person, even when behavior issues are apparent. But my view is this: send the low values person down the road, perhaps to our competitors, sooner rather than later.” Jim Clayton

“Our most powerful differentiation is our store level personnel. We’ve found it’s very difficult to train employees to provide fast, friendly, courteous service. There is only one opportunity to generate employees with this critical skill: you have to hire them.” Chester Cadieux, Quiktrip

“Over time, we can almost always train for technical prowess… We can and do train for all that. Training for emotional skills is next to impossible.” Danny Meyer, Union Hospitality Group

“We hire people with the right personality and the right attitude. We can always teach them how to change tires. People do business with people they like. Hire, motivate and reward the people that others will like and, no matter what the product, the probability of success rises sharply.” Michael Rosenbaum, Discount Tires

“I believe we can train competence, but we can’t train commitment. That’s the primary reason we promote from within wherever possible.” Chester Cadieux, Quiktrip

“We need good people to help us. At Stew’s, most of our management people were promoted from within. We found that we are way better off growing our own people for our management jobs. We feel that loyalty is more valuable than operational skills. We can always teach skills, but loyalty is something you can’t teach.” Stew Leonard

Core Values / Culture

“The only way an organization can create a lasting customer service culture is by hiring people who buy into the core values.” Robert Spector Nordstrom

“When considering a prospective team member, we seek individuals who will embrace our core values and dedicate themselves to the O’Reilly Culture. For new team members, a significant amount of their training focuses on our culture, to carry forward those values that have been critical to the success of the company.” Larry O’Reilly, O’Reilly Automotive

“Building a values-driven culture of service begins with hiring people who share those values and who fit into the culture. We then expect them to earn the trust of management, colleagues and, of course, customers, with a strong desire to give great customer service.’ Robert Spector Nordstrom

“James Collins, coauthor of ‘Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies’, which profiles Nordstrom. "The goal is not to get people to share your core values. It's to get people who already share your core values.”

“Many of the companies we talked to are known for bringing potential recruits back seven or eight times for interviews. They want to be sure of the people they hire, and they are also saying to would-be-recruits, “Get to know out company. Decide for yourself whether or not you can be a good fit with our culture.’” Tom Peters, ‘In Search of Excellence’

“Cultural fit is paramount for employees in hiring and also employees/managers in choosing a company to work for.’ Kent Taylor, Texas Roadhouse

“There's plenty of opportunity for the future. Opportunity is not the challenge. Ensuring that all of the new team members we will hire stay true to our mission and values as we go about seizing that opportunity is the challenge.

"We must recruit and reward team members at all levels. Good and passionate people who embrace the culture and our core values. Once again, company culture is the standard against which Tractor Supply will grow its people. “There's a 20/60/20 rule at work here," says Wright. "Twenty percent will readily get it and adopt the culture. Sixty percent will eventually get it. And twenty percent will resist it and may, in fact, sabotage it. "Many companies make the mistake of trying to win over resistors. But the resistors need to be ferreted out and sent packing. The time that would have been devoted to them is far better spent praising the early adopters.” Tractor Supply

Hiring to culture also puts team members in a better position to live up to their shared mission of working hard, having fun, and making money.” Tractor Supply

“How we hired at the Home Depot: First and foremost based on character, integrity and trust. Another way to put it would be: hire for culture. Choose someone based on whether they’ll be a good cultural fit and contribute to the company’s expression of its values.” Arthur Blank, founder Home Depot

“At the end of the day, what is most distinct about Reckitt Benckiser is its people and culture. I can tell in three minutes if someone would be a good fit for our company. We’d rather have a position open for a long time, if necessary, than put the wrong person in place. It’s that important.” Bart Becht, Reckitt Benckiser

“As Koch we strive to hire and retain only those who embrace our principles." Charles Koch

“’Visionary,’ we learned, does not mean soft and undisciplined. Quite the contrary. Because the visionary companies have such clarity about who they are, what they’re all about, and what they’re trying to achieve, they tend to not have much room for people unwilling or unsuited to their demanding standards.” Jim Collins, Good to Great

“The most important task is hiring people compatible with the organization’s culture. Hire people for who they are, not just for what they know and the skills they have mastered. Hire character, teach skills. Never the reverse.” Peter Schutz, ex-Porsche CEO

“How can companies create such rich and productive cultures as Firms of Endearment have, and then protect and preserve those cultures for the long term? First, by hiring people who ‘buy’ and ‘live’ the culture and the vision/mission of the company. This is especially important in lifestyle companies. LL Bean, Patagonia, and REI hire people with a strong interest in outdoor recreation; and Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Wegmans hire ‘foodies,’ people with a passionate (almost obsessive) interest in food.” Rajendra Sisodia, Firms of Endearment

“We have found that an ingrained understanding of the beliefs of IBM, far more than technical skill, has made it possible for our people to make the company successful.” Thomas J Watson Jr, founder IBM

Diversity

“I’ve got a product development team of 20 people, and boy, do I ever mean this and I wish I could scream it louder, on my 20-person team I want at least one philosophy major, one music major, one history major, and a few people who know them one-on-one equals two. Diversity of thought is the number one secret to innovative success.” Tom Peters, ‘In Search of Excellence’

“If you surround yourself with people exactly like yourself, you run the dangerous risk of groupthink, and no one has creativity to come up with new ideas. The goal is not to create a group of clones, culturally engineered to mimic one another. Rather, unity is about maximising uniqueness and channelling that toward the common goal of the group.” Captain Abrashoff

“The team [excluding the original members] I recruited came from a variety of nationalities, backgrounds and careers. I had noted that those who had worked hardest for me at Goldman Sachs hadn’t been British or privately educated. I wanted true diversity among my colleagues to make sure that we had a true diversity of opinion. I didn’t want us to be yet another classic City of London institution…. Such a diverse pool of talent resulted in an extraordinarily creative and dynamic environment, and also a very competitive one.” Guy Hands, Terra Firma

“Promote a diversity of thinking and talent. Urge associates to express their ideas, even if their thoughts are contradictory to yours or the majority view,” Henry says. He knows some of the best ideas come from individuals who think outside the box. A diverse workforce – in terms of cultural background, gender, lifestyle, colour, and age – adds rich perspectives.” Thomas Bloch, H&R Block

“Diversity helps organisational performance because it brings in a multiplicity of ideas and approaches to achieving goals and dealing with problems.” Kirk Kazanjian, Enterprise-Ren-A-Car

“When people from several departments, varied backgrounds, and different perspectives work together to refine an idea, the finished product is likely to be far better than the result any one of them would have come up with alone.” Madan Birla, Fedex

“Think of your teams the way that sports managers do : no one possesses everything required to produce success, yet everyone must excel.” Ray Dalio, Bridgewater

“An important component of investing includes surrounding yourself with smart people, considering diverse points of view, and being willing to admit when you are wrong.” Steve Romick

“The leaders of my department understood that to create a fertile laboratory, they had to assemble different kinds of thinkers and then encourage their autonomy.” Ed Catmull, founder Pixar

“The last thing you want is a team of Mini-Me’s. Difference – whether it’s a different background, different ethnicity, age, or different gender – is a source of strength.” Leonard Lauder

“Hiring people with diverse backgrounds brings in flexibility of thought and openness to new ways of doing things, as opposed to hiring clones from business schools who have been taught a codified way of doing business. A business that thrives on being different requires different types of people.” Yvon Chouinard, founder Patagonia

“The more diverse our team became the better; the only requirement was a positive attitude and high energy.” Kent Taylor, founder Texas Roadhouse

“We are interested in getting a wide range of diverse people into our company, not just based on race or other groupings, but people who have different perspectives in the world, because we operate as a global company. We operate trying to meet the needs of a wide range of segments. And so what we want are people who think differently but also are aligned with our core values.” Kenneth Chenault, Amex

“While we have long believed in the benefits of our diverse culture, Pershing Square’s diversity is not just defined by our racial, ethnic, sexual identity, and gender differences. Our team members come from highly diverse geographical, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds and represent broad viewpoints, politically and otherwise. Yet, we all manage to get along well without the corporate politics typical of many companies” Bill Ackman, founder Pershing Square

“We also believe diversity applies to more than just the list of businesses we’re in. It means diversity in the people of our organization. We need people with different skills, backgrounds, and points of view, to bring robust talent to the tasks at hand.” Thomas Gayner, Markel

“Key to the success of a team, and as important as individual ability, is cognitive diversity. As Michael Mauboussin has said, being different is as important as being good; alpha lies where the set of good ideas intersects the set of different ideas. Cognitive diversity takes the form of the heterogeneous perspectives, rules of thumb and interpretations which each multi-counsellor brings to the firm.” Jeremy Hosking, Hosking Partners

“An effective group doesn’t need a lot of people with high g scores; it needs a balance of people with different skills. Whatever the task at hand, be it hunting for food, building a home, or navigating a ship, it’s going to have different components that require different skills. Performance will be best whenever you have a team that has the full panoply of skills required to do the task.” Steven Sloman, The Knowledge Illusion

“Diversity in all its forms brings different perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the table. By embracing diversity and creating an inclusive environment, organizations can tap into a wealth of talent and creativity, leading to innovation and better problem-solving.” Garry Ridge, WD-40

Hire Potential / Long Term

“At Enterprise, leaders look to hire people who can grow into general managers, people who within just a few years will essentially be running their own business at a branch office. This career track is appropriately compared to a real-world M.B.A. Everyone starts at the bottom, but no one is treated as a mere underling. All branch employees are accorded dignity and respect; they are expected to dress professionally, and they are paid as professionals.” Fred Reichheld

“Today we hire people with the long term in mind. We’re not bringing them in to do a job; we’re inviting them to join the company. . . . If you hire people with the potential to grow far beyond their current position, you build depth and additional capacity in your organization.” Michael Dell

“Mainfreight had begun with a policy of never hiring anyone who did not have the potential to become a branch manager. Now they wanted thinkers with the potential to be not so much branch managers as managing director. The brief was simple enough: ‘Find people for the future – people who will fit into the team, have a cultural fit. Achievers who are going to be able to take the company to another level. People able to grow and develop themselves and Mainfreight.” Keith Davies

“Whenever we hire a man, we bear in mind that we are hiring a prospective manager. We do not want a man unless we have reason to believe that he has the ability and ambition to become a store manager, or better.” Charles R. Walgreen Sr.

“When graduates come into Mainfreight there is never a promise of a particular role. The understanding is that they come into the business for a career that will unfold as they learn and show their potential.” Keith Davies

“Over the years, time spent on the floor has been reduced, but the theory remains the same; these are likely to be the men and women who will be running the company one day. They are encouraged to make both suggestions and decisions from day one, on the basis that they know the business from the floor up.”

“Enterprise is different. The company doesn’t want people who merely seek to be behind the rental counter. It wants every candidate to aspire to greatness. The management trainee position represents a unique career trajectory that can literally take an employee from the ground floor to the executive suite in a matter of years.” Kirk Kazanjian

Untainted Hiring

“Instead of targeting people between 25 and 35 years of age who had been exposed other corporate cultures, we decided to go after younger people who were just graduating from college. At that age, they weren’t used to any particular kind of corporate culture.” Richard Farmer, Cintas

“We like to hire young men just as they come from the schools of pharmacy, and we maintain vigilant contacts with schools to that end.” Charles R. Walgreen Sr.

“Interestingly enough, Enterprise-Rent-A-Car hires very few degreed MBAs, because it likes to teach the fundamentals of running a business The Enterprise Way, rather than attempting to have candidates relearn what they’ve been taught in school.” Kirk Kazanjian

“I prefer the boy from the farm to the college man. The college man won't begin at the bottom to learn the business.” F.W. Woolworth

“Employ graduates straight from university. The basic reason for this is that they are unsullied. They have not been strapped into a suit and taught to think by a company with nothing on its mind but short-term profit and early retirement. We are trying to do things differently from everyone else, so it’s easier to teach fresh graduates this new way, and enable them to challenge established beliefs, than to retrain someone with ‘experience’. Sometimes some of our staff do lack knowledge, but there is now a cadre of experienced and talented managers, and this combination provides an extraordinarily energetic and intelligent stratum of managers, which is what gives Dyson its strength.” James Dyson

“I would rather take a new man and train him into the business than to take an experienced cashregister man and try to teach him new things. The green man would make the better salesman. Many of the sales agents, who have been in the business for a long time, will not accept any new points from us. They think we know nothing about selling cash registers, and they get angry with us for suggestions which we may make. Such men can never hope to make much money. It is the men who are willing to accept information and profit by it that will get ahead in this world; therefore, I think that better salesmen can be made of new, green men, who are willing and energetic, than can be made of men who have had some experience in this business.” John H Patteron, National Cash Register

Filling Places

“Better to have a hole in the team than an A-hole.” Anonymous

“A company should hire slowly, researching the candidate objectively and asking all the right questions. But it should fire quickly.” Gerald Bell [via Carolina Way]

“Although quick employment decisions may reduce short-term stress, they often feed a vicious circle of costly, long-term mistakes.” Chester Cadieux, Quiktrip

“Don’t delegate employee selection. Senior executives of high-loyalty organizations know that the destinies of their firms will be determined by the people they recruit, so top leaders— including CEOs themselves—spend as much of their time as possible on this vital function.” Fred Reichheld

Hire Slowly, Fire Quickly

“The truth is, no company can afford to keep employees who fail to create enough value for customers to more than cover their own compensation.” Frederick Riechheld

“We're very slow to hire in terms of being deliberate about who we have joining the team. That matters to us tremendously.” Julie Turpin, Brown & Brown

“When you have able managers of high character running businesses about which they are passionate, you can have a dozen or more reporting to you and still have time for an afternoon nap. Conversely, if you have even one person reporting to you who is deceitful, inept or uninterested, you will find yourself with more than you can handle.” Warren Buffett

“If you get a bad apple anywhere in the lower executive levels, you’ve got trouble. But get a bad apple at the top and you’ve got super trouble.” August Busch III

“If you wonder what getting and keeping the right employees has to do with getting and keeping the right customers, the answer is everything. Employees who are not loyal are unlikely to build an inventory of customers who care.” Frederick Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect

“A company should hire slowly, researching the candidate objectively and asking all the right questions. But it should fire quickly.” Gerald Bell

“Most people would look back and say their worst mistake was not firing someone soon enough.” Charlie Munger

 “You got to be quick to fire when somebody doesn’t fit in culturally. If somebody’s trying, they get the culture, they’re trying their best, they’re in a bump in the road, or they need some training, but they’re smart enough, energetic enough, those people you should live with for a while. But if somebody fundamentally doesn’t buy into it or they’re a politician or they’re not truthful, you got to get them out quick.” Nick Howley Transdigm

“If someone is not prepared to accept and share the values and principles that define the culture of an organisation, it is not likely it can be corrected by remedial training.. Hire slow and fire fast. Many organisations and managers get that backwards. They hire fast and then drag the sometimes inevitable departure out to the detriment of all involved.” Peter Schutz, ex Porsche CEO

“I have always flunked firing people who needed to be fired.” David Ogilvy

“Success involves a process. Recruiting and retaining the best people is crucial. At times, I've kept non-performers too long.” Jim Clayton

“Don’t hold onto toxic people. Try coaching first – some people have no idea how they are coming across – but most often it’s best for you and them if you move them on to new opportunities without delay.” Kent Taylor, Texas Roadhouse

“We've had people at the firm made us a lot of money, could not live by our culture and values. They basically were, you know, one-man shows and they did not want to go to other meetings to help anybody. We fired them because you'll ruin the place if you let that continue. And we could not let that kind of behavior continue.” Henry Kravis, KKR

“In fact, one of my greatest regrets or failing as a leader is that I should have fired more people faster.” Ron Shaich, founder Panera Bread

“Nearly every entrepreneur can tell stories of holding on to people too long.” Bennett Helzberg, Helzberg Diamonds

“Out of new staff, on average 20 – 25 per cent are inevitably recruited in error. The important thing then is to correct this error. The matter should not be delayed because of prestige or discomfort. Remember that you are responsible for having recruited the wrong person, it is not the person’s fault.” Percy Barnevik, ex CEO ABB

”Replacing managers: Be less rather than more patient when replacing managers. If one of your managers is not performing – replace him or her, do not hesitate. There are many excuses for postponing decisions: ‘needs more time to demonstrate his or her skills’ etc. I have rarely regretted a decision to remove a manager because it was premature. But I have almost always regretted that I had not replaced the person sooner. It may sound heartless, but your responsibility is primarily to the company and poor leadership is disastrous for the employees.” Percy Barnevik, ex CEO ABB

“It makes a difference how people are treated when they lose their jobs, and not just to those who are out of work. Callousness affects the morale of those who are left behind: recent research suggests that a toxic corporate culture is more likely to lead to employee attrition than any other factor.” The Economist