Future-Focused Hiring Standards

"There's the IBM person in a white shirt or a Ross Perot person who came from the military. We want people who are not absolutely conventional. Who cause trouble because they are willing to break some of the boundaries and challenge us or someone else, or chal- lenge an idea. You need a certain amount of brewing in the pot. [Otherwise,] the tendency for people is, well, let's all just get along. I don't want the organization to settle in to lattes and talking about what we did over the weekend."

"McCaw is scrupulous about those he selects for his senior manage- ment group. He subjects potential hires to a series of interviews with top managers, plus a meandering, soul-searching, character-exploring encounter with him. While McCaw was traveling once, he asked a candidate for a high-level finance position to meet him at the Denver airport for what was supposed to be a one-hour meeting. McCaw swooped down from the clouds in his private plane and left his wife and others to wait as he probed the candidate's childhood, life experiences, ideas, and values. The session expanded to fill six hours. Finally,"

"McCaw took extreme care in filling senior positions, often subjecting an applicant to an exhaustive meeting vvm^rehe would spencThours asking about personal history. He wouTd~pb^elJuTsTions" abouthow an appli- cant hacHTandled problems or how he would manage a hypothetical situation. He might ask: Have you ever hired anyone smarter than you? Have you ever taken a complex process and made it more simple? By the time an applicant had survived this process, he would have truly earned any job offer."

"Even Patti Cannon, Cannon's wife at the time, got a call from McCaw. It was ostensibly a mere courtesy call, but Patti suspected that the purpose of McCaw's questions was to determine whether anything in Cannon's home life might create problems for the company. Patti Cannon took no offense; she saw it as smart. "Craig cared about your family, your whole life, because it influenced how you could produce at work," she says. "That's how he succeeds. He thinks about the entire package.""