Recently, our corporate recruiter Margaret Hartwig was featured in a Mashable story about recruiting for startups. Since we’re hiring, I thought it might be a good idea to run through a few things that we – like other creative, flexible tech firms – tend to look for in a candidate.
Willingness to fail. If you’re not willing to fail, you’ll never take risks, and without risk there is no home-run reward (see the stock market for examples). We look for people who are confident enough in themselves to do something borderline crazy, because they think in their heart that it’ll work.
Willingness to succeed. Goes hand-in-hand with willingness to fail, but if you want to work for fast-moving tech firms, you’ve got to be ready to succeed and deal with the pressures that come with it. Success breeds expectation; if you hit a home run, you’d better be ready to hit another one… and another one… and so on. Slow and steady does not win the race in this industry; fast and furious does.
Fight for your ideas. Fight hard. If your idea is awesome, prove it; and if your boss pushes back, be ready with data showing just how much merit your plan really has. At some point, someone didn’t invent the light bulb because their boss told them it was a stupid idea. They missed out on success, wealth, and notoriety. We don’t need that person; we need the person who told their boss exactly why it was a GREAT idea, and went on and did it.
Fit into the culture. Companies like Chitika are not IBM or Dell; there’s a core of intelligent, creative people who love the job and work together like a family (a family that innovates in a snap of the fingers). There’s no dark, solitary back room for you to plug into and work away quietly if you don’t get along; you’re part of the family, or you’re part of another company.
These guidelines should apply to any creative tech startup, not just Chitika. If you’re in the greater Boston area and think these describe you, check out our current openings, and contact our recruiting department to schedule an interview.