Ben Horowitz’s Three Steps Guide To Hiring: Don’t judge a book by its cover

Source: The Rosen Group

Ben Horowitz’s Three Steps Guide To Hiring

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Finding talents has always been a major challenge for many companies especially in the Artificial Intelligence field. Even the big companies have to mobilized their celebrity CEOs to hire top talent. For example, JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon just poached Professor Manuela Veloso from Carnegie Mellon University to be their Head of the Artificial Intelligence Research.

Most startups do not have a celebrity CEO and they cannot offer lucrative compensation package like the tech giants. In his book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, he spoke about the challenges in hiring a VP of Sales when he was the CEO for Opsware.

After interviewing about two dozen candidates and none of them had the strengths he sought. Then Ben interviewed Mark Cranney. Mark did not have the stereotype of a hard-charging sales executive. He was not tall and he went to a school that Ben never heard of — Southern Utah University. Mark also made people feel uncomfortable. Read More...