Thomas Koeppen Blog

i found an fantastic description of Marc Andreessen (Founder of Ning – the social network and co-author of Mosaic – the browser) on hiring people:

First, drive.

I define drive as self-motivation – people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be asked, to achieve whatever goal is in front of them.

People with drive push and push and push and push and push until they succeed.

Second criterion: curiosity.

Curiosity is a proxy for, do you love what you do?

Anyone who loves what they do is inherently intensely curious about their field, their profession, their craft. They read about it, study it, talk to other people about it… immerse themselves in it, continuously. And work like hell to stay current in it.

Not because they have to. But because they love to. Anyone who isn’t curious doesn’t love what they do.

And you should be hiring people who love what they do. As an example, programmers.

Sit a programmer candidate for an Internet company down and ask them about the ten most interesting things happening in Internet software. REST vs SOAP, the new Facebook API, whether Ruby on Rails is scalable, what do you think of Sun’s new Java-based scripting language, Google’s widgets API, Amazon S3, etc.

If the candidate loves their field, they’ll have informed opinions on many of these topics.

That’s what you (we) want.

See also his original post: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/how_to_hire_the.html