Finding People Who Are Passionate

About What They Do

Trilogy Enterprises Inc. of Austin, Texas, is a fast-growing software com- pany, and provides software solutions to giant global firms for improv- ing sales and performance. Many of its approaches to business practice are unusual, but in Trilogys fast-changing and highly competitive envi- ronment, they seem to work.

There is no dress code and employees make their own hours, often very long. They tend to socialize together (the average age is 26), both in the offices well-stocked kitchen and on company-sponsored events and trips to places like local dance clubs and retreats in Las Vegas. Re- sponsibility is heavy and comes early, with a just do it now attitude. New recruits get a few weeks of intensive training, described by par- ticipants as more like boot camp than business school. Information is delivered as if with a fire hose, and new employees are expected to commit their expertise and vitality to everything they do. Jeff Daniel, director of college recruiting, admits the intense and unconventional firm is not the employer for everybody.

The firm employs about 700 people. Trilogys managers know the rapid growth they seek depends on having a staff of the best people they can find, quickly trained and given broad responsibility and free- dom as soon as possible. CEO Joe Liemandt says, At a software com- pany, people are everything.... Of course, the leaders at every company say, People are everything. But they dont act on it.

Trilogy makes finding the right people a company-wide mission. Recruiters actively scour college career fairs and computer science departments for talented overachievers with ambition and entrepre- neurial instincts. Top managers conduct the first rounds of interviews. Employees take top recruits and their significant others out on the town when they fly into Austin for the standard, 3-day preliminary visit. A typical day might begin with grueling interviews but end with mountain biking.One year, Trilogy reviewed 15,000 resumes, conducted 4,000 on- campus interviews, flew 850 prospects in for interviews, and hired 262 college graduates. The cost per hire was $13,000; Jeff Daniel believes it was worth every penny.

QUESTIONS:

1. What screening test(s) would you suggest and why?
2. What, if any, questions should be added to the application? Specifically how should the firm check candidates' backgrounds, and what questions should they ask previous employers and references?