The 3 Things Uber Can Teach You About Hiring

Jayneel Patel
Jayneel is the CEO @ OpenXcell, Leading Mobile App Development Company and Orderhive, a SaaS based Multichannel Order and Inventory Management System

A few days ago, I talked about Google changing its hiring criteria and how it valued intellectual humility than other things. Today with a fresh example of a fresher company, Uber, I try to illuminate the balance that the new age organizations seek in a candidate.

I do not remember a more recent startup that made it this big. The heights that Uber has achieved in the last few years can only be called phenomenal. As Uber grows through usage and demand, it needs to expand its operations and hence its workforce.

Uber is a company with innovation and problem solving at its very core and they bring the same to the table in their hiring process.

1. It takes Three to Tango: In the process of expansion into new geographies, Uber had a very lean plan worked out. It employs a team of just 3 people. It is headed by the city General Manager who looks after the overall operations and drives strategy. A community manager to market the concept on social media and local markets and an operations manager to handle the logistics.
2. Focus on ‘Can’, not ‘Would’: Uber has bid adieu to the time tested formula of behavioural questions and all it tests now is if provided a situation, what the prospect would do. If he is able to outperform the tricky part and solves the problem for the company, he has a very solid candidature.
3. Operate Global, Hire Local: Another master stroke in the process is of hiring the local guys to handle the marketing and operations of the particular geography. I think it is a wise strategy to implement. Not only does it provide the local market intelligence to the company, it is providing the sense of oneness too.

Businesses today have not been confined to predefined boxes now. Every business with a people interface is creative and analytical. Hence it becomes imperative to find the candidate with the right balance of the Right and the Left brain.

Uber’s philosophy to ‘discount people’s previous experience but put a heavy premium on their ability to prove to you in the interview process that they have the right skill sets to solve the problems that your business has’ is an exemplary demonstration of the new age businesses and their hiring criteria.

With more and more freshness coming into the scene, I don’t think the archaic practice of hiring will remain in practice for long. They are bound to be reinvented and for good.

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