
How Gusto Built Scalable Hiring Practices Rooted in Tradition - sisypheanblithe
http://firstround.com/review/how-gusto-built-scalable-hiring-practices-rooted-in-tradition/
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dpcheng2003
My 2c as a former Gusto employee:

The watermelon interview was no joke and not a rubber stamp. I wasn't on the
watermelon crew but it was a real badge of honor at Gusto to "represent"
Gusto's values.

When we hired 200+ people from 2015-2016 across two offices, the watermelon
interview was critical to make sure we were hiring the right culture fit
Gusties.

Glad to see this covered by FRV and posted on HN.

~~~
conception
It's not surprising that it works. It's pretty similar to how henry schein
grew and kept its culture. They do the same thing in many ways, looking for
compatible culture, during acquisitions as well.

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tqi
> "service mindset, intellectual curiosity, no ego and the ability to embrace
> change"

How does one evaluate a candidate fairly across these 4 traits in a 30 minute
interview? This type of Cultural Fit interview seem pretty fraught with
unconscious bias...

~~~
kevan
Have multiple diverse interviewers. Calibrate everyone with relatively
standard questions by shadowing other interviews. Have everyone write feedback
and justify their viewpoint with data from the candidate responses. Make them
enter written feedback blind without talking to each other and then combine
the feedback at the debrief.

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tuyiown
> Three to four members of each hiring panel join the offer call, everyone
> cheers and shares anecdotes from their interviews

I'm always off put with that kind of «relevant only when spontaneous»
formalized behavior. How is it supposed to work ? But maybe it's just a
culture problem since I'm non US :) .

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bluntfang
I'm really not enjoying the corporate world's coopting of words like tradition
and culture. Seems very dystopic.

~~~
tuyiown
Well the premise is that it should emerge naturally from the group of people,
I see it as people centric and not mindless corporate execution in the works.

No question that if it comes of fashion in management, the natural aspect with
fade out to a artificial «natural» process that won't work, but I don't see
any worse than others awful corporate practise such as group pressured
cheering or mandatory good mood.

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CPLX
These First Round content marketing articles are uniformly ridiculous, yet
they consistently make the HN front page.

I mean guys they are telling you to “groom watermelon farmers“ with a straight
face as business advice. I feel like like Mike Judge would have tossed that
line out as too over the top.

~~~
dang
They don't consistently make the HN front page, or even come close. Looks like
4 out of 30 articles in the last 8 months:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=firstround.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=firstround.com)

