Extreme interview

Intense 'hiring weekends' let employees choose future co-workers.

By Paul McNamara
Network World, 06/25/01

There was something about watching one employee stoop to tie another's dangling shoelace that helped convince Cynthia Reese she wanted to work for Collective Technologies.

That something? The guy doing the stooping was CEO Edward Taylor, a fact she learned later when he made a speech.

Such glimpses into the personal dynamics of a company generally aren't part of the interview process. But they have been at the Austin, Texas, company Collective, where periodic "hiring weekends" at resort hotels have helped humanize the process by supplanting the dreaded, often unproductive office-to-office shuffle of job candidates.

You might think of these weekends as combining the recruitment and social aspects of a fraternity rush with the intellectual intensity and high stakes of college finals.

E. Taylor Taylor claims - and his charges confirm - nothing but positive results from this unorthodox approach: 75% of invited attendees are offered jobs, and 75% accept. Although Collective is rumored to be downsizing due to the economy, the technique boosted employee retention and created a corporate culture that puts a premium on sharing hard-to-find technical knowledge.

"If you use your hiring process to begin the process of socialization, then you can continue it very easily once people are on board," Taylor says. His employees - they're actually called "members" - provide IT infrastructure management services to the likes of American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Morgan Stanley.

Although suspended for the moment, these hiring weekends have been a company cornerstone since Collective was founded in 1994. They are held throughout the country in inviting locales such as Cheyenne Mountain Resorts in Colorado Springs, Colo., The Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Va., and The International in Bolton, Mass.

The events bring together about 15 job seekers with roughly three times as many Collective members, both management and rank-and-file. The candidates are prescreened, first by outside recruiters, then in evening telephone interviews conducted by Collective members. The employee group does the hiring, with each individual holding veto power over any candidate.

You're thinking this sounds costly, right? "It's probably the single most expensive way to hire I have ever seen," Taylor acknowledges. He estimates his $15,000 per-hire tab is roughly double traditional methods.

But he insists it's worth every penny. And those who have participated swear by the process.

"You tend to relax and be more of yourself, which is important for both sides," says Andy Silver, a senior consultant with Collective for three years. "You don't want to [fast-talk] your way into a job when three months later somebody is going to walk you out the door. On the other hand, from the point of view of the company, we don't want to hire somebody we're going to have to walk out the door."

The weekends are designed to let both parties understand each other at a depth rarely accomplished through traditional interviews. Taylor says the recruits realize they're encountering something different as soon as they show up Friday night and wade into the opening reception.

"As the evening wears on, and it does sometimes go quite late, you become socialized very quickly," he says. "Your guard's down. You realize you're not being confronted with a bunch of stiffs in suits, you're just hanging out with really great systems managers."

Saturday morning brings "four hours of PowerPoint bombardment," Taylor says, where "you're taken through the entire history of the company; everything's laid bare." The purpose is to get the prospects to buy into the Collective program.

"After lunch comes the hard part," he says. "It's three back-to-back, in-your-face, rip-your-guts-out technical interviews."

Which can be an eye-opener for the candidates. "I came to the weekend thinking I was pretty knowledgeable in the technology," says Joshua Canary, a Collective senior consultant. "I left hoping I was good enough to get an offer."

"The same people who were buying me drinks and telling me stories on Friday night were brutalizing me during our technical sessions Saturday afternoon," he adds.

Saturday evening brings more good times. The members say these social gatherings can be more important in terms of judging prospects than the formal sessions.

Sunday morning the job seekers hear more about the company from the Collective members who are about to pass judgment on them. The prospects head home that afternoon while the members discuss who will receive job offers.

The single-veto provision has occasionally cost the company a quality candidate, Taylor acknowledges, but he considers that a small price for the group buy-in the process produces. He does not believe the social aspects of the weekend compromise the hiring group's ability to make objective decisions.

By Monday the winners and losers know their fates.

"If you hire this way, the hiring decisions aren't made by management, they're made by the team members themselves," Taylor says. "And that becomes essential because we expect that from the first moment that new-hire walks into Collective that every member of the company will be willing to stand in support of them technically in any way they possibly need."

Even tying the occasional shoelace.