How To Choose The Right Employees For Your Corporate Culture

At Method we fundamentally believe culture is our only sustainable, competitive advantage. We need to have a culture that has the ability to continually innovate, be the thought leaders and do this in predictable ways over and over and that always goes back to having a really great culture. So the technique that we use to ensure that we ultimately bring the right people into our culture is what we call our homework assignment. Essentially it is a live audition – it’s a way we really kind of test the chemistry with a potential, future partner and so the way we do this is kind of an interview process if we’ve got a candidate that we really, really love and this would be the time when most other companies would probably be making an offer. We have an extra step – which is the homework assignment that we ask them to come in. They’re given 3 questions, 45 minutes and then present it to the 7-10 people that they interviewed with. Two of the questions will be customized to their role, but the last question is always the same: How will you help keep Method weird? Because weird for us is a cultural value and the reason it’s a cultural value is because weird people change the world, weird people do things differently so we want you to bring some of that to Method, but we also want you to bring your personal self because we believe people perform best when they’re their personal self at their professional self and getting that on the table and really getting to know a potential candidate. The good thing about a homework assignment is, essentially it allows you to see how a candidate thinks, how they react to a problem. I mean, the second you ask someone to do a little but of work before you’ve even hired them you get a really good sense of their work ethic and bad employees can’t hide in a homework assignment, it sheds light onto their real capabilities, but at the end of it you also know if they’re going to get the job or not based on the chemistry in the room and if they really feel like a great fit for the culture. It also makes for a great onboarding so that first day they arrive at work they already know, the company and the people really well and so that first week goes so much smoother and hopefully in the end you don’t make a mistake on the wrong hire.