Hire for strengths and not for weaknesses

I really like the quote from Ben Horowitz “Hire for strength, not lack of weaknesses”. Here is an instance on how I used this quote to choose between candidates for a senior position.

A few days back I was in a dilemma in deciding between 4 good candidates for a senior position. Before we start interviewing for a position, we have a fair idea about the skill sets we are going to evaluate candidates on, so that we have a basis for objective comparison among candidates. Here is what we rated our candidates at the end of the interviewing process -

	Candidate A	Candidate B	Candidate C	Candidate D
Skill Set 1	9.5	8	6	5
Skill Set 2	6	8	9.5	9
Skill Set 3	7	8	7	7
Culture Fit	9	9	9	5
Sum Total	31.5	33	31.5	26

Some notes -

• We provide above table (score against skill sets) to the candidate whenever he/she joins the company. This helps him in defining roadmap of his learning curve
• Culture fit is absolutely essential - so any candidate who doesn't score on that is not a fit at all. Candidate D is out
• Summing up scores on all skill sets, it is clear that candidate B is the winner

Now let us use the title quote and see why we ended up rejecting candidate B.

There is a huge difference in output between good and great skill sets. Taking an analogy from sports, if Usain Bolt can sprint 100m at 27.7 mph, you can not combine 2-3 runners together to outdo his performance. Similarly, when I appeared for the IIT JEE exam in 2003, gap in scores between AIR 1 and AIR 2 was huge and the gap kept on reducing with subsequent ranks. After 100 ranks, there were multiple ranks on the same score. Quality curve is highly exponential as you aim for the world best. A typical skill set vs output graph -

Coming back to our candidate selection, we wanted to have world class output in Skill Set 1 and Skill Set 2 rather than just good output in all skill sets. Hence we chose - Candidate A + Candidate C over just selecting Candidate B. This wasn't a simple decision as we started with hiring for just one candidate. So a few other logistic notes - 

• As per our roadmap, we would have anyway hired another team member in the next 6 months. We had to compress the timeline for the second hiring.
• We had to marry (work profile) of both the selected candidates so that they can combine their individual strengths to yield max output together. Logistics of this marriage had to be solved before we floated the offers. 
• We bet that Candidate A will also excel in Skill Set 3 in 4-5 months. He has aptitude and intent to excel and not just be mediocre - he has demonstrated the same in Skill Set 1. Further we verified his learning curve so we know that he will also acquire expertise for Skill Set 2 & Skill Set 3 in the next few months.

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Partner in above crime - Suhaas Kaul :)