An interesting approach, and it's refreshing to see an employer wanting to be honest and open during the recruitment process, but it feels like this advice has a limited audience. It's fine if you are hiring for a large established hedge fund where you can afford attractive salaries but how many people are in this situation?
A lot of hiring happens in response to a crisis like having to replace an existing employee or having too much work for too few people. In these situations it's not feasible to invite every candidate round for pizza and a chat about ethics and then find all of them work. It's more about deciding what to compromise on. For most companies it's going to be more about things that are quickly testable: skill, experience, ability. 'Goodness' as the article describes is much more difficult to elicit in a candidate. Like any personality trait it's something that doesn't tend to manifest until much further down the line when the new hire has settled into the role.
Allen doesn't really provide any details on how you would discover the 'goodness' of a candidate prior to hiring. Other than laying down the ground rules of what he expects there's no mention of how he estimates this quality in a candidate. According to his success stories the candidates simply self select but this can't be a reliable method. What about people who use their niceness to masquerade as 'good' people?
It's good advice to be open and honest with potential employees but I don't really see what most recruiters can take away from this. Talented, experienced individuals can be difficult enough to find without having to look for some vague idea of how 'good' they are too.
I think a 10 person organisation would probably still be at the stage where they have a lot more to worry about in potential candidates and probably don't have access to enough capital / cachet to be able to attract the ideal person.
There's so many assumptions in your statement(s) that it's hard to really take them seriously. I don't know where you get the idea that "A successful company making lots of money" and "Companies with more than 10 employees" always intersect.
A lot of hiring happens in response to a crisis like having to replace an existing employee or having too much work for too few people. In these situations it's not feasible to invite every candidate round for pizza and a chat about ethics and then find all of them work. It's more about deciding what to compromise on. For most companies it's going to be more about things that are quickly testable: skill, experience, ability. 'Goodness' as the article describes is much more difficult to elicit in a candidate. Like any personality trait it's something that doesn't tend to manifest until much further down the line when the new hire has settled into the role.
Allen doesn't really provide any details on how you would discover the 'goodness' of a candidate prior to hiring. Other than laying down the ground rules of what he expects there's no mention of how he estimates this quality in a candidate. According to his success stories the candidates simply self select but this can't be a reliable method. What about people who use their niceness to masquerade as 'good' people?
It's good advice to be open and honest with potential employees but I don't really see what most recruiters can take away from this. Talented, experienced individuals can be difficult enough to find without having to look for some vague idea of how 'good' they are too.