Man, Rand took a trip to both Houndstown and Badgersville to constantly bug me to finish this damn thing, so I'll let the fanfare die down before proceeding...
Ahem. Okay.
Remember when we hired Jane? Come on, think back. It wasn't that long ago. Anyway, the whole hiring experience was tiring, amusing, and (at least to SEOmoz) somewhat interesting, so I was assigned to write an article detailing the whole sordid process. The article took longer than expected to write up, due to a crapload of client deadlines and other frontburner tasks, but I finally finished it for your viewing pleasure.
I hereby present to you The SEOmoz Hiring Process. Please pretend to care.
By the way, feedback and suggestions for how to structure future interviews are more than welcome. Just don't yell at me for being mean or harsh. It's been a long couple of months!
UPDATE - from Rand; I made a couple edits to the article to make it a bit less negative, but hopefully no less fun.
By: Rebecca Kelley
The SEOmoz Hiring Article!
Moz News
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
someone send me the links to the pic of the beer can getting shmushed :P
That one was a hypothetical. Sorry, oilman :)
I had the great pleasure of reading the unedited Director's Cut of the article: absolutely hysterical!
One could argue that some of the hesitant reaction demonstrates EXACTLY why the interview process had to be so thorough to insure SEOmoz would find someone they could get along with. Anyone who can't appreciate the sarcastic, cynical, rant-o-riffic sense of humor Rebecca demonstrates in this article probably wouldn't jive well with the mozzers on a personal/social level and probably doesn't appreciate the comedy of Louis Black (for which they are a lesser human being).
Thanks! I really appreciate that.
Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black are some of my favorite comedians. I love satire. I love sarcasm. I have no doubt I could get along very well with anyone at SEOmoz but I still stand by my earlier comment.
Wow, I'm worn out just reading that let alone taking part in the process. Congrats Jane on rising to the top. I guess the one theme that came through was you were looking for a personable person that was "passionate". Those are definitely two qualities you can't learn but you can always learn SEO and SOO. If you are passionate about this industry and want to work for the best then 'Sea Moss' is the place to be.
I've been on the hiring end, and your description of the process that SEOmoz took was both entertaining & informative.
Great post Rebecca.
Would it help if I submitted my Video Resume. LOL
Hmmm... I take this back
Aw man.
Rebecca, great article. Don't listen to the "politically correct" folks who can't handle the truth. Let's be Frank here. Instead of criticizing the "cruelty" of a hiring process, let's learn what to do and what not to do during the interview.
I had to hire people and fire them as well. I can also come up with few funny interviews. How about one where a 40+ year old lady came wearing nothing but her short shorts and a tank top. Now that's what I call casual.
By the way ... you're a very good writer. Not everyone can make their reader feel as if they are having a conversation with you and not just reading letters on the paper.
Thanks, Igor! I wasn't too keen on writing the article because I feared that no one besides SEOmoz would bother to read it, but I'm glad I'm getting good feedback and kudos.
Um. Not worth writing or reading? I think it belongs on the "required reading" list for all future SEOmoz hires. :)
Aw shucks...
bummer - you owe me a beer in Vegas for gettin my hopes up then ;)
Letdown #2: I'll be in Worthing, England, training with Ammon during PubCon. THE HORROR! How's about a beer at SES Chicago?
I'll be in Vegas though, so you can get a beer by proxy.
Rebecca, can I borrow $5?
Fluxx, you and I could split it: a $2.50 contribution each.
Ho-Lee Krap! In recognition of your love of grrrreat cover letters, I can't help but implore you to check out this gem. It's guaranteed to (hopefully!) make every letter you received look positively Shakespearian by comparison.
The part about how he can't cook and thus prefers to eat raw food really gets me. I mean, did he copy and paste the text mistakenly from the wrong document?! This said, I feel better about my cover letter now. I didn't manage to mention my disturbing food preferences, at least.
Hilarious. Painful (to anyone who sees their boo boo and now knows why they got the boot). Brought back some memories for me, like how I got my first job, in 1995, in web design (I was the only female applicant, the only one not formally trained in anything related to computers.I got the job because I animated the company's mascot and sent it as an example of my creativity, along with a thank you note in the form of an HTML page. I think I was only person who thanked them for the interview too.)
You guys had a normal process but not killer. That would be the kind where I worked in software QA and we learned the hard way, like you, how to get new team members. We finally discovered there are the premlinary interview, then an interview with everybody the applicant will be working with in the department, followed by an open house, where all the applicants come in TOGHETHER and we interview them, with a new set of questions, again.
The winner of one of those ritual rounds of hell is now my husband.
Heh
Awesome article Rebecca, I laughed my ass off! Sounds like we have very similar philosophies in our hiring processes and the way we are trying to build our businesses. Well done Jane!
Ok, that was very entertaining, but I gotta say that I'll have to remember to never apply for a job at SEOmoz. Why? Because that sounds grueling for the applicants! Man, oh man, if I were applying for a CEO or something...maybe...but entry level? Jane, I commend you for passing that test!
Admittedly, from the interviewer's point of view it can seem a bit harsh and overwhelming. However, I don't think the applicants had to put up with a whole lot more than any other career-track job would have required. A friend of mine went through a similar process for a marketing position.
As far as I know a resume, cover letter, phone interview, & at LEAST one in-person interview are just about industry standard. The blog posting and the 2nd interview were a little past the norm, but this is an amazing place to work, you gotta give a little to come join.
I definitely agree that the process was a lot harder on the employees than it was on the applicants. As Gillian said in the office today, they had to deal with 100+ people: we only had to deal with ourselves.
Donna - I did my best to make it a fun and easy process for people; trying to relax them as things got tense, be friendly, funny, open and honest. That said, I'm with you - this was no cakewalk for any interviewee. We asked a lot and we're very lucky to have had so many passionate people apply for the position.
I must say, if I'd known all that was going on while I was still a candidate, I'd have been very torn between:
1) I will never in a bazillion years get this job, and,
2) I've got to be brighter than the girl who linked to her Pabst Blue Ribbon tribute page. I mean, come on. It could have at least been a can of Sparks.
But in all seriousness, I find the article both complimentary and scary. I begin to worry about the boring-ness of my cover letter, dull-ness of my writing samples and incoherent-ness of my telephone interview... and then I see a picture of me standing next to Stephen Colbert. Which, somehow, makes me feel a bit better!
Clearly your stuff wasn't that boring or dull, because we ended up hiring you! If it's all a facade, then you're the best damn actor we know.
Oh, fun article....
I have so many horror stories, so many.
I hate hiring, it may be the worst part of owning a company.
Oh wait, firing is worse. :)
I'll agree with a couple of other people, in saying that the comments on past employees are harsh. It doesn't seem very professional to me and it's probably not worth it when considering that you're coming off as a very hateful, unlikable person, in exchange for having some entertainment value with those comments.
We weren't trying to run a smear campaign here. Every one of the employees we pulled general examples from was "let go" for that very reason, so I think it's fair on our behalf to vent our frustrations. It's not like we fired someone for being fat or for some other discriminatory reason, nor is it like someone quit and we decided to be a jerk about him or her.
I appreciate your having the guts to say that, Greg. As a past employee, I didn't feel it was my place to do so. I think that Rebecca makes a number of very good, accurate, and relevant points. There are simply a few things that seem personal, rather than professional, and I take issue with them. It's good to know that a company can fess up to its hiring mistakes. On the other hand, it would make me uncomfortable looking at a company's hiring process to know that they publically flame their past hires for things such as "seem[ing] to have missed How to Not Suck at Making Friends Day in Kindergarten."
I would like to say that I do think SEOmoz's hiring process is awesome. Both Rand's last Craigslist post, and the one that I applied to were really appealing and personable among a sea of anonymous, dry, and soulless postings. I thanked him for that at the time and having recently been through it once more, I will thank him again.
Also, Jane is right that it's more work for the crew than the applicants. I had a lot of fun with my SEOmoz interview-- they asked me things like how I'd arrange a zoo full of animals and why, when I was used to being asked to describe situations "where I felt I'd made a great independent contribution" and other scripted sadness. It was kind of like being on a fun quiz show more than being in a grueling interview.
Although a bit harsh, my point with that part was that when you work in an extremely small company, everyone will notice if one of the team members doesn't fit, for whatever reason. It's bound to cause some discomfort and lead to communication problems, which will in turn affect the way the company is operating.
When you work with six other people in an environment where you're constantly collaborating with each other, I think it's essential that everyone feels comfortable around each other and gets along. According to Rand and Matt, they had experience with past employees who chose to alienate themselves from this setting, which doesn't fit with how SEOmoz is run.
Kat, if you have a specific issue with the article, feel free to privately let myself or Rand know and we'll certainly discuss it with you.
I agree that you have a point. Like GregH, however, I disagree with how you made it.
Whilst I enjoyed most of the article I gotta say I agree with Greg and Kat. Some of it had me absolutely cringing. There was some pretty harsh stuff in there.
Uhhhmazing article. Multiple out loud laughs. Well worth the time - both coming from trying to hire people, and just for general entertainment value.
A bit excessive in parts (a bit TOO personal on some of the stuff - that you might want to reconsider) - but you can't make an killer omlette without breaking a few eggs.
Thanks for attempting to remind people that a company can be FUN and still professional.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This has to be the most hilarious, politicaly-incorrect, and self-absorbed article we've ever offered. But... it's pretty genius. Nice work Rebecca. I think this will technically belong in our soon-to-be-launched new section of the site, aptly entitled "fun stuff."
Just look at what she's written: too many of our prior employees seemed to have missed How to Not Suck at Making Friends Day in Kindergarten, because we've worked with some surly sons of bitchesThat's harsh, Rebecca... how do you objectively interview an applicant when you've seen a picture of her smushing a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon between her boobs on her Myspace profile pageIs smushing a real word? Nothing says Je suis très prétentieux quite like submitting a writing sample in a language none of us speakWell, now Jane speaks French, so we can have her check them out. One applicant thought SEO meant "search engine optimal" and claimed to not know what "SOO" wasouch...
From a past employee's point of view-- particularly one who was there after the last hundred-applicant hiring process-- I think it's great to finally have a procedure nailed down. I bet Rand is glad to have you to help, Rebecca, as I know he'd be insane trying to coordinate the whole thing by himself.
As a past employee, I also think that some of what you've written *is* harsh and probably unneccessary. But, eh, different strokes for different folks, and this isn't the time or the place for me to respond to those points of your article. We all have different professional goals and I'm glad that you guys are pursuing things your way. SEOmoz is definitely a unique place to work.
Also, I just want to say: Jane, your head looks really good on my body. :-)
Rand wanted me to highlight some of SEOmoz's experiences with former employees, be it contractors, web developers, etc. I obliged.