We're currently hiring at Yarno and our philosophy is that if you show your personality, people will show you theirs (aka their 🎵 true colours, shining through...🎵 ). So we really try to make our job advertisements "feel" like Yarno.
Cultural fit is as important to us as technical fit. So you've got the skills, the qualifications, the experience - but do you have the mindset? 'Check your ego' is one of our core values. We need people who put themselves aside in favour of the team. People who will pick up jobs outside their job-description when the team needs it; people who fight against the urge to get defensive, and use challenges as an opportunity to check their ego and grow. To me, all the technical qualifications in the world are nothing if someone's not good to work with.
And to find that cultural fit, we tailor our job advertisements to the kind of people we want. Here's a snippet from our Marketing Manager role we're currently advertising:
I know it's silly to mention our favourite sitcoms in a job application, but it also shows me two very important things:
- The person applying has a sense of humour and will participate in the office banter.
- Strong applicants usually find a way to work in their love for any of the above in a humorous yet professional way, showing them to have excellent written communication skills as well as impeccable taste in television.
Well - it seems to be working! I can say with 100% confidence that our hiring process has delivered us all A-player team hires.
Another benefit, I find, is that it spices up hiring as a whole. Every now and then we get a real left-field applicant, or a bold move, to mix-up the often repetitive process of reading applications. For example, one applicant, in lieu of a cover-letter, just attached this image to their application:
(A bold move but ultimately unsuccessful. Referencing David Brent in your cover letter = good. Using David Brent as your cover letter = not so good. There's method to our madness.)
And, besides our own internal approval of the process, we also get a lot of external validation! It seems like every day we get a new applicant telling us it's the best job advertisement they've ever seen. A few examples:
The applicants might be trying to flatter us, but see the image below - one person wasn't even applying and they reached out to let us know they loved the ad!
Feels good, man. And, besides the wonders the compliments do for my ego, I also find that injecting a bit of ~ flavour ~ into our job ads leads to more open, honest, and even fun interviews. It's working for us - the last round of hiring delivered us Dale Shaw, our newest, excellent CSM. The system works.
