Jerry Jao

<start of post>

I’ve spent the last decade building teams, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned... it’s that the best hires don’t always have the best resumes. 😅

In fact, some of my absolute favorite people to work with (looking at you, Matt Glickman!) came from backgrounds that didn’t "fit the mold" on paper.

Why? Because you can’t teach grit.

You can’t teach someone to care about the mission when things get messy at 2 AM.

I was thinking about this today while catching up with a founder friend who is scaling their engineering team. They were stressed about finding "perfect" candidates.

My advice: Stop looking for the perfect resume and start looking for the signals. 🚦

Curiosity: do they ask "why" or just "how"?

Resilience: have they failed and actually talked about it?

Ownership: do they say "we" or "I" when things go right?

Building a company is hard work. (I’m basically a pro at the "hard" part by now! 20 desks in one day, remember? 🛠️)

But it’s a lot easier when you have a team that BELONGS together.

We’re doing a lot of this intentional building at Employ right now, and I couldn’t be prouder of the crew we’re assembling. 💜

If you’re a leader trying to move beyond the resume, I’d love to hear what signals YOU look for. Drop them in the comments! 👇

#Hiring #Leadership #Culture #FutureOfWork

<end of post>