One of the books I am currently reading is The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton. Even though the book is 13 years old and I have been away from the rat race for just as long; I know from random tweets, the news and my acquaintances that a lot of the things mentioned by the author still holds true today.
On page 65, point four of the hiring and firing policies states:
Every candidate is interviewed by people who will be above, below, and alongside them, status-wise. And people from unrelated professional disciplines participate.
I did that when hiring junior graphic designers at Zappos. I did not called these interviews, nor make them official. I just divided up my own interview session, and encouraged some of my co-workers to have a chat with the potential candidate.
Also on page 65:
Research on job interviews and hiring decisions shows that the recruiter tends to hire candidates who look and act like his or her favourite person on the planet – him or herself.
Well, my hires included a young father who previously worked for a bank, an internal hire of a Hawaiian Filipino who worked in customer service, an ambitious quirky African American woman, and a German American teenager who looks like a Viking. My then team of designers also included a scruffy, sometimes disgruntled New Yorker who just happened to end up with me. Any of them look or act like me? Probably not…
Was I an asshole manager? Maybe not, judging from the positive reviews I got from all of them. I can be strict and demanding, but I was well liked and respected. These are now just good memories. The important thing is that my little ones have grown and flown far from the nest. And I am proud to have been a tiny part of that.