Elad Gil 4th tip on hiring the right person for your company’s culture:
4. Take people out for a "beer" test as part of interviews.
We would take every candidate to some social outing (typically dinner or beer after work). In a startup, people work long hours and you want to make sure people fit in and the team and create an even awesomer [1] environment.
Intriguingly, in a "social" environment, the candidate would often show more of their "true colors". Especially if beer was involved. This often happened before any beer was drunken – I think it was just a shift to a more social context from a work one that triggered behavioral changes.
A greatexampleis a candidate we rejected post beer test, who was one of the strongest engineers technically that we had ever interviewed. However, once we made it to the bar he made a lot of really bad off-color jokes that crossed the line and made the team uncomfortable about him.
For many of the people we hired at Viddler we did exactly the same thing. And sometimes with a similar result. First and foremost I want someone I can work hard with. And it is tough to work hard with someone who creeps you out regardless of how good they are.
/via Dick "I’m the CEO at Twitter but really I shouldn’t have let Feedburner die" Costolo.
