mordant wit

We do a lot of recruiting, here at Ye Olde Amazonne Headquarteres, and we've learned a ton about it in the past few years. Many of our lessons have been through trial and error. Like that time we discovered that you don't attract candidates by putting them in a tiny, crowded, poorly-lit, poorly-ventilated room, interviewing them mercilessly for 8 hours with only a lunch break, and booting them out with a quick "we'll call ya... a cab, that is." Thank goodness we've stopped doing that.

Although trial and error has taught us many lessons, perhaps our best source of information about ways to win at recruiting is the candidates themselves. They tell us all kinds of good stuff. For one thing, they often tell us what they like and dislike about our interview process. I can tell you this much: they all love the 'W' hotel in downtown Seattle. All of them. It must be nice. And they all dislike the US1 interview rooms (e.g. conf US US1 497, if you want to peer at one).

But candidates, especially college candidates, give us an even more valuable source of information. They have their collective ear to the ground, and they can tell us what the buzz is: who's hiring, which companies everyone wants to work for, which companies are known to be awful working environments, etc.

And most importantly of all, they tell us how other companies recruit.