“What advice would you give for hiring good people?”
This was the question asked by the head of the engineering department during my recent UCLA book tour.
The question took me back 35 years, to when I was hiring executives at Digital Link. Back then, my thinking was simple: how do I recruit aggressive people who may be rough around the edges — there are always compromises — but who push to get things done? That was my priority. Since then, I have often thought about how aggressiveness in driving could reveal something about a person’s drive and competitive instincts. Yet I never dared take a candidate on a test drive on the highway.
Competitive and less patient, shall we say: those were the kind of people I believed had a high likelihood of working out, especially in a startup. Hiring is the hardest part of the job as a CEO. Today’s companies use psychological tests and group interviews, a more recent trend. The problem remains: how to be objective. Humans are inherently prone to biases and first impressions. I’m not sure psychological profiles have actually improved the success rate. Wrong hires cost companies both time and money. In a startup, especially in the early stages, that can be life and death.
Another complexity unique to startups is that the company changes rapidly. You’re hiring someone not just for today, but for what the company will become. Can the candidate grow with it? It’s a crystal ball.
Any successful manager must surround themselves with people who are winners. I always attributed that to a quality I had acquired, and it helped me greatly — or so was my view of myself.
The driving analogy stayed with me. Cutting in front of other cars is not just rude — it is very rude. But we all have tendencies we cannot leave behind. Life has never been about idealism, but about choosing the right things at the right time while minimizing harm to others. I started driving as a teenager in India, and in its disorganized traffic, that was the only way to forge ahead. So perhaps that stayed with me. I would never know.
I remember a lunchtime discussion from even further back, when I was still working for my employer. There was a very likable engineering manager, Tony. He had a smile that seemed to jump at you, cheeks bulging as if he were always on the verge of laughter. His demeanor invoked positive feelings. One day at lunch, the topic drifted to stories of “how we got stopped by a police officer on the road.” The mood turned light and free.
Tony was straightforward and simply said, “Once, when traffic was backed up, I got pulled over.” The officer said he was driving too close to the car in front. Tony, smiling, told us he’d told the policeman, “Officer, you know how it is. If you leave too much room, others get into your lane in front.” I was impressed by Tony’s straightforward talk — he gave the officer credence, which translates into respect. Back in India, no one would have such honest discussions with the police. The story had more impact on me, perhaps, because I was still not quite ingrained in American cultural nuances. Many people added their own stories.
A more senior engineering manager added, “In New York, we kept the driver’s license folded with a $20 bill inside. When we got stopped for speeding, the officer would ask for the license — and if he let you go without a ticket, that was happy news. The $20 did the trick!”
Aggressive posturing is not always bad, even though I hate to preach bribing. But examining all options to advance — within the framework of law — is a plus.
But my advice to the UCLA head of engineering, though, was none of this. Instead, I said:
“Hiring is tricky. The only criterion I consistently applied was: if a candidate is good‑looking and charismatic, scrutinize them more.”
There was laughter in the room.
It reminded me of one CFO candidate I interviewed when we were going public, in late 1993. I needed someone more polished. This individual came dressed well, was good-looking, and articulate — I was sold. Soon after he joined, our sales team organized a golf tournament, and as part of the executive team, the new CFO came well prepared. He’d bought new shoes and new clubs. But no one was impressed by his scores. On the business front, my conversations with him didn’t go much better either. Experience gave me a good feel for numbers, and I felt something was off. It was then that I realized I had gotten carried away by appearances. I let him go within three weeks.
I had learned that the hard way.