CEO Reveals One Question That Tells You Everything About a Candidate.

The world still needs problem solvers and self-starters no doubt. The world revolves around answers to problems and employers also look to get the best hands on board when hiring. In an interview with Simon Anderson, Chief Executive of DreamHost, a Web hosting provider and domain name registrar; Simon shed light on qualities employers look for in candidates and other hiring tips.

See excerpt below.

Q. Let’s talk about hiring. What qualities are you looking for, and what questions do you ask?

A. I like to hire someone who’s the sort of person who believes they can come up with solutions to problems. It’s definitely not black and white, but I find that if I ask someone about their experiences, and their answers start sounding like, “The world did this to me,” or “An outside party did this to me,” then that can be a signal that maybe they’re not the right candidate. I’d much rather have people who believe that they’re empowered to do things.

Q. If you could ask only a couple of questions in a job interview, what would they be?

A. Probably the first one would be, “Tell me about the first experience in your life when you realized that you had the power of change or the power to do something meaningful.” It’s open-ended. Some people might tell the story of when they were 5 and there was some incident and they had to take more responsibility for their baby brother or sister. Maybe it was from their teenage years. “Something bad was going to happen at school and I stood up for this friend of mine and all of a sudden I felt self-empowered to do things.” I think that’s really important. If someone sits there and they’re stumped, I think that tells you something.

I think there’s this big shift under way in business where you have to respect the fact that people are going to forge their own path and they’re going to be motivated by different things and they’re going to want to do meaningful things. So finding people who are equally motivated and believe in that is really important.

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