Hiring the Top 1 Percent
If you’re looking to recruit the best and the brightest, it is important to start earlier than you think.
Joel Spolsky recently wrote a piece for Inc.com about his unique recruiting techniques. I found it interesting because he focuses his piece on college students. Not college graduates, mind you, but college students, particularly those looking for summer internships.
Mr. Spolsky recruits computer programmers for Fog Creek Software in New York City. Fog Creek’s internship program easily trumps any internship experience I ever had. He begins with a hand written letter to the top 300 IT students in the country, followed by an informal phone interview with those that are interested. After asking them a couple of mid-to-complicated programming questions, the ones that they are most interested in get an all expenses paid trip to Manhattan for an interview at their offices.
The chosen few are then put up in a dorm for the summer and paid a weekly stipend. Here’s the clutch: Fog Creek’s interns actually get to do programming! In fact, they sometimes get better assignments than the actual employees. Why, you ask, would a company put so much faith and power in the hands of lowly interns? Because they are being tested and although they may not know it, they are also being recruited. The entire summer is one long recruiting process with the interns never being the wiser.
Those interns that excel are offered jobs following their college graduation. And Spolsky can be confident that he is hiring the best and the brightest — before they even start looking.