A survey across the recent history of corporate innovation reveals how consistently world-class talent rises as a key differentiator. From AT&T’s famed Bell Labs, to Xerox’s legendary PARC facility, to Lockheed Martin’s acclaimed Skunk Works shop, one thing that set these units apart was their insistence on hiring the very best talent in their field. Every organization wants to hire the best talent, yet few take pains to ensure that their hiring process is delivers the best results.

When Amazon was growing at an almost exponential rate in the late 90’s, one of the biggest challenges they faced was human capital: they simply couldn’t hire as many people as they needed to execute daily operations. With unfulfilled orders filling the floors of fulfillment centers around the country, one can forgive the tendency to rationalize a less-than-exceptional hire; after all, “a warm body is a warm body,” many a stretched-thin manager might reason. But as detailed in the fantastic The Everything Store, one of Amazon’s core values was “high bar for talent” (the others were “customer obsession, frugality, bias for action, and ownership”), so such shortcuts were prohibited:

“Bezos begin thinking about ways to inculcate those values in the company beyond hanging the lists on the walls of offices and distribution centers. To reinforce the notion of the high hiring bar, he drew inspiration from nearby Microsoft. As part of its famed recruiting process, Microsoft designated what it referred to as an as-appropriate senior interviewer, who talked to the candidate last and got to make the final judgment on the hire. Assigning an experienced executive to this role helped ensure that Microsoft maintained a consistent hiring standard…

“Bezos crafted Amazon’s own version, which he called bar raisers.

“Bar raisers at Amazon — the program still exists today — are designated employees who have proven themselves to be intuitive recruiters of talent… At least one anointed bar raiser would participate in every interview process and would have the power to veto a candidate who did not meet the goal of raising the company's overall hiring bar. Even the hiring manager was unable to override a bar raiser’s a veto. ‘Many companies as they grow begin to compromise their standards in order to fulfill the resource needs. We wanted to make sure that did not happen at Amazon.’”

I’d love to learn other examples of keeping recruiters honest amidst the pressures of growth. Please drop them in the comments below.

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