UPDATE: Just wanted to add, after hearing good feedback, that I am not at all trying to say that all employees should be great athletes or even play sports at all. What I describe below is that IF (and only IF) a prospective employee does play a sport, observing or, even better, playing with them can offer amazing insights as to how they will be as a colleague. Further, “Sport” and “Ultimate Frisbee” are simply metaphors for any competitive project… could be a sport, an online game, or a TopCoder competition etc.
I love creative and unusual techniques of screening new employees. Most employees have figured out “the system” by now (and if they have not, thats a warning sign right there). They know the questions prospective employers generally ask and have already practiced forty ways of responding, depending on the angle of the sun coming through the window, size of the smile on the interviewer and countless other variables.
The typical interview setting is ridiculously artificial and a terrible indicator of how that person will be in the real work environment. You have to put people in situations where they will fully be themselves and forget about the preparation of how they “should be acting.”
There are a few ways to effectively do this. One is to live with somebody for a week. It is extremely hard to keep up your guard for a week straight while living with somebody. You get to know them well and you’ll figure out quickly how it will be to work with them. Due to time and other constraints, I’ve been told this strategy isn’t entirely realistic so another good way I have found: play Sports.
I can tell how good somebody will be as a colleague after playing sports (specifically Ultimate Frisbee as that is my sport of choice currently) with them for an hour better than a dozen interviews or 360 degree evaluations can. It is tough to “game the system” in an intense athletic competition.
People want to win.
I have heard some people say “But I’m just not competitive.” That’s BULLSHIT. Nobody wants to lose… and if they are ok with it, they shouldn’t be at your company. The key is what are they willing to do to win, how they act when they win or lose and how they play.
Below are a couple of quick ways to test potential employees based on sports.
Ask them their in-game stats (how many times they have scored, how many assists have they had, how many great defensive plays). If he can tell you he has scored 6 times, with 3 great D’s and 12 assists, DON’T HIRE HIM. In the middle of an intense sport, an elite player has no time to remember or even think about their own stats. They are ONLY thinking about what they can do at that second to help their team WIN. Somebody who knows their stats is selfish, a self-promoter and will be poisonous to your company.
Deliberately place them in extreme situations (put him in when the team is losing drastically… then put him in when they are winning by a huge margin and see how he plays). This will be extremely evident and indicative of whether he can handle the ups and downs of a startup. If he gets extremely frustrated and gives up when he is losing, DON’T HIRE HIM. If he acts like a dick and showboats the hell out of the other team when he is winning, DON’T HIRE HIM. He should be playing 110% for every second that he is in the game. It’s a privilege to be playing just like it is a privilege for him to be at an exciting startup. You don’t want somebody who won’t be giving their all- no matter whether it is the best day or worst day in the world.
Make terrible Foul calls on him (in Ultimate Frisbee this works because people call their own fouls, but in other sports, “play dirty” on a couple of plays to test this one) How does he act when there is clear unfairness and cheating happening? If he decides to stoop down and cheat as well, DON’T HIRE HIM. If he sits passively and just lets it keep happening without calling it out or figuring out how to fix the situation, DON’T HIRE HIM. You don’t want somebody who won’t say something that needs to be said when tough times come up.
These are a few ways I look at Sports in the context of hiring. Add others in the comments section if you have them or let me know if you think this is idiotic. I GUARANTEE that after watching an Ultimate frisbee game for a few hours, I can tell which players are the most successful, ambitious, passionate- it is an amazing way to screen employees… more on Ultimate as it relates to Entrepreneurs in a soon-to-come post.
Follow on Twitter: @evanreas
I agree in principle, however, if you’re hiring for a CTO that needs to have coding skills, sports won’t be able to test how good they’ll be.
A sports based interview can only test softer, non-technical skills.
You’re on the right track although if someone has never played Ultimate I’m not sure it’s a fair test. I have used this method for years informally by shooting some casual hoops with people. Almost every American has handled a basketball at some point in their life. Do they share the ball? Do they have grandiose beliefs in their own ability? Do they immediately dribble straight at you in an attempt at intimidation and power? What do they do if they miss a bunch of shots? What do they do if they make a bunch of shots in a row? Do they treat a 10-foot swisher as if they won the Super Bowl? As you say, it’s very telling.
Mike: “Almost every American has handled a basketball at some point in their life.” I haven’t! School sports (a/k/a forced sports) was miserable for me, and I swore never to have anything to do with sports as an adult if I could avoid it. By this standard, I am perfectly unemployable.
If you make me play basketball or any other sport against my will YOU flunk the interview.
To be clear, I am not advocating playing sports as a mandatory part of any interview process.
What I am saying is that IF a prospective employee does play a sport, it is a HUGE value add to watch/play with them to be able to see and judge their personality in that context.
I am not one that read this and concurred…
I have to agree with Rick – I have never handled a basketball either, and I was born and raised in the USA. I was home schooled, so I never had forced sports. The closest I’ve come to basketball is back in college I took a volleyball class and one of the techniques to practice accuracy was to try and put a volleyball through the hoop, but throwing it using your thumbs, not like a basketball.
I couldn’t even tell you the rules of basketball or ultimate frisbee without looking them up on wikipedia.
This is a horrible post considering that your thesis is “what I do must be an example of what a great person does, so other great people must do the same”.
The most basic example is that many people who play traditional sports would simply laugh at you when you bring up ultimate frisbee. Though I think ultimate frisbee is a sport, I doubt the type-a’s you’d like to hire would think your athletic disk-throwing prowess is on par with their personal ability in basktetball or golf.
Maybe your next post should be “Best Way to Screen Future Employees? Direct Feature Films” or “Best Way to Screen Future Employees? Preform a Hostile Takeover of a Multinational Corporation”.
Simply put: your drive to play sports is your drive, not everyone else’s.
again… i am simply saying that IF (and only IF) a prospective employee is somebody who does play sports, one can get a lot of valuable information from observing it.
Re: how “real” ultimate is as a sport = totally irrelevant. Ultimate can be interchanged with anything competitive for this context.
Example: My Co-Founder, Prasanna was ranked #1 TopCoder in India. He put hours of work and intense preparation into coding and when he competes, he will make sure to perform. Doesn’t matter if its Ultimate, Football, coding, or WOW… you can tell things about people by watching them compete.
>you can tell things about people by watching them compete.
Sorry dude, a good competitor does not make a good employee. Bear Sterns’ bond group was full of highly competitive (and bright) people. What resulted, you could trust no one as everyone was competing to be number 1 and stealing deals from behind your back.
Being singularly competitive does not directly make an ideal employee. Maybe an ideal CTO or CEO, but when your dev team are competing against each other it’s not healthy. Remember, winning and competition is not about being right, it’s about being aggressive.
When discussing your company’s architecture/design choices do you want people that are fair critical thinkers or people that want to win their argument (sorry you’re not allowed to pick both)? From what I know about him, Woz cared little about competition and much more about the engineering process.
Then again, go ahead and hire the top competitors. I’ll make sure to hire the top engineers.
Competitive as a team and doing whatever it takes for the team to win is different than being selfish (thus my comment about knowing individual stats above). My two co-founders are the top engineers in the world and we work as one and will continue to do so.
Of course they are.
Again, good luck apply your rule to new hires that you don’t know outside of the interview.
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Evan,
I agree with your point. One can learn a great deal about a person based on how they interact in the practice of sport. Very little work is done completely individually, and sport is an opportunity to watch how someone interacts with a team in a non work environment. I am a terrible basketball player, but I can still go have fun with a group of friends on the court, push myself, and enjoy the spirit and challenge of the game. Work is similar, we are not all experts at everything, but if we engage each other as a team and leverage other’s strengths, in the end we like our jobs and the people we work with everyday. Working with the “showboater” or “Mr. Negativity,“ can make the sport of work a drag. If I had that magical opportunity to create their dream team, I want a diverse team that can relate to a competitive environment. There is a reason NCAA athletes are so successful after graduation and I think you hinted at it here.
Cheers,
Fazio
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Yes and no. Consider a pick-up game (any sport or competition):
1) You _do_ learn a lot by watching how someone handles an “unfair” situation. Are they passive? Vengeful? Able to work things out to be “fair?” More importantly, are they able to make things fair in a way that today’s enemy will play on a team with you at tomorrow’s pickup game? In technology… and in business… today’s enemy might be tomorrow’s customer, partner, employer, or acquirer.
2) You _don’t_ necessarily see how a person will be at work. I know people that are highly competitive on the field — real a-holes — and passive at work. And I know people who are the opposite. Some people (like yours truly) play sports to relax. Yes, I like to win and I go all out, but it’s just a game to me… a prelude to post-game beers. But it’s a serious mistake to think that I am the same way in my business dealings.
Now, regarding ultimate: I invite you to come to Boston and play in a freezing rain. We do it all the time. And we like it. I expect I’ll learn a lot about you by hearing you whimper in defeat in the cold and damp. Game on!
Thanks for the post… and I will accept your challenge. Next time I am in Boston, we shall play. I played college Ultimate in cold snowy Ohio and at Oxford in England– not the most pleasant weather ;-P