ReWork

don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do—set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc.—but they do it by themselves and for themselves.
    These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of hand-holding or supervision.
    How can you spot these people? Look at their backgrounds. They have set the tone for how they’ve worked at other jobs. They’ve run something on their own or launched some kind of project.
    You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. Finding these people frees the rest of your team to work more and manage less.

Hire great writers
    If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off.
    That’s because being a good writer is about more than writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate.
    Writing is making a comeback all over our society. Look at how much people e-mail and text-message now rather than talk on the phone. Look at how much communication happens via instant messaging and blogging. Writing is today’s currency for good ideas.

     
The best are everywhere
    It’s crazy not to hire the best people just because they live far away. Especially now that there’s so much technology out there making it easier to bring everyone together online.
    Our headquarters are in Chicago, but more than half of our team lives elsewhere. We’ve got people in Spain, Canada, Idaho, Oklahoma, and elsewhere. Had we limited our search only to people in Chicago, we would have missed out on half of the great people we have.
    To make sure your remote team stays in touch, have at least a few hours a day of real-time overlap. Working in time zones where there’s no workday overlap at all is tough. If you face that situation, someone might need to shift hours a bit so they start a little later or earlier in the day, so you’re available at the same time. You don’t need eight hours of overlap, though. (Actually, we’ve found it preferable to
not
have complete overlap—you get more alone time that way.) Two to four hours of overlap should be plenty.
    Also, meet in person once in a while. You should see each other at least every few months. We make sure our whole team gets together a few times a year. These are great times to review progress, discuss what’s goingright or wrong, plan for the future, and get reacquainted with one another on a personal level.
    Geography just doesn’t matter anymore. Hire the best talent, regardless of where it is.
     

     
Test-drive employees
    Interviews are only worth so much. Some people sound like pros but don’t work like pros. You need to evaluate the work they can do now, not the work they say they did in the past.
    The best way to do that is to actually see them work. Hire them for a miniproject, even if it’s for just twenty or forty hours. You’ll see how they make decisions. You’ll see if you get along. You’ll see what kind of questions they ask. You’ll get to judge them by their actions instead of just their words.
    You can even make up a fake project. In a factory in South Carolina, BMW built a simulated assembly line where job candidates get ninety minutes to perform a variety of work-related tasks. *
    Cessna, the airplane manufacturer, has a role-playing exercise for prospective managers that simulates the day of an executive. Candidates work through memos, deal with (phony) irate customers, and handle other problems. Cessna has hired more than a hundred people using this simulation. †
    These companies have realized that when you get into a real work environment, the truth comes out. It’s one thing to look at a portfolio, read a resumé, or conduct an interview. It’s another to actually work with someone.
    * Carol Hymowitz, “Any College Will Do,”
Wall Street Journal
, Sept. 18, 2006, online.wsj.com/article/SB115853818747665842.html
    * Peter Carbonara, “Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill,”
Fast Company
, Dec. 18, 2007,