Company culture and fruitcakes.

In order to get the very best people, and to get the most out of the best people it's necessary to create a corporate culture of extreme fun. This does not mean samba dancing in the cubicles. But, rather it means creating an organization of high-performance people where anyone from the outside looking in would say: "Man I would love to work there!"

I have always believed that after you earn a basic income, after that it is all about the game. It has to be a heck of a lot of fun.

So when recruiting, we look for exactly that. People that want to come with their a game on: take no prisoners. We advertise a message of high-performance, run with the big dogs: fun.

The problem is this. When we say to the outside world that this is the best place to work we get the best people.

But, we also get every fruitcake, weirdo, and loony who can read a classified ad. They want in on the fun too!

I truly want to get this company to position where we can do exactly what Jonathan Davis at Hire Better ( jd@hirebetter.com ) calls the virtual bench. This would mean that we wouldn't have to cull through the nut cases. This also means we would not be limiting ourselves to hiring talent that is simply available at the time.

After all, the very best people are probably not looking for a job.