Social media giant Facebook is one of the most successful companies in the world and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Mark Zuckerberg is a genius, but he can't do this alone, and Facebook has a reputation for attracting and finding some of the best employees in the world to grow the business.
Whether you run a global tech giant or a small café with five staff, I think there are some great lessons we can all take out of Facebook's recruitment strategy.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Miranda Kalinowski provided insights into their winning formula. "We want to make sure that we approach recruiting in the same way that we approach the design of the product and the services that we deliver to the world," Kalinowski said. "And that's with the focus on connection. We want to connect to our candidates in the recruiting or interviewing process pretty deeply."
Builders
'Anyone who listens to Mark will hear him say that we've still got 5 billion people to connect,' Kalinowski said. 'No one should be resting on their laurels."
Facebook loves hiring people who are never satisfied with the status quo and always looking to improve.
'We hire builders,' Kalinowski said. 'Regardless of whether we're hiring an engineer or a finance analyst, they're going to be the people who like to build things.'
Diverse Backgrounds
There is a lot of research on the benefits of diversity in the workplace, including this study by Kellogg Insights, which demonstrated diversity could tangibly add to the influx of new ideas and creativity.
It looks like Kalinowski agrees. Facebook managers focus on the diversity of not only race and gender but also the background in an attempt to drive high performance throughout the organisation.
Cultural Fit
Each company has a unique culture, and it's vital that recruits, while bringing values that may add to the culture, generally fit with the organisation's core philosophy.
The first round of recruitment is a phone interview with the hiring team, which assesses the candidate's professional work experience and passion for the company. Then, advancing to the next stage, the candidate will have a 'technical' phone interview with an employee who already has the job the candidate is applying for.
Facebook is famous for its hypothetical interview questions to assess cultural fit and understand if the person has the right thinking to fit into the team well.
Talent
There is no point being someone with a "builder" mindset with a cultural fit from a different background if you don't have the talent to do the role.
The last part of the interview process at Facebook is testing talent. In the case of Facebook, various tests assess skills required for the department and position in question, such as code tests or marketing projects.
Facebook hasn't grown to over 1.6 billion users by chance, and it's fair to say its approach to selecting new employees is a big part of its success.
This makes the approach they take for recruitment immensely valuable for anyone in business who is looking to hire the right people.
Cheers
Chris Fordyce
Customer Success
Magically Simple Staff Rostering
