I built my first business when I was 16. I quickly realized that hacking wasn’t an action, it was a mindset.

Flashforward. My 4th startup is about to go live and we’ve made hacking our motto (it’s literally the #1 item on our manifesto). Everyone from our devs to our communication crew has to think like a hacker.

Back when we were operating incognito and only needed a few key employees, we could hire on recommandation. We can’t do that anymore, so we decided to go hacker-style.

This is the only clone we’ll accept. The Shyft team in October 2016.

Don’t be a clone

For a year now, I’ve been building Paris-based startup Shyft with Maxime Bourdon to give control back to the taxi and private-hire car drivers and passengers.

Shyft is a geo-localized real-time marketplace that connects passengers and independent drivers, primarily in emerging cities, thanks to a new monetization model. Passengers choose their ride. Drivers decide how they want to do business.

At Shyft, we want our team to understand how systems work; that’s reverse engineering, that’s hacking.

Whether in front or in community management, we want people to analyze, question, dissect everything in order to find the flaws and the forces, to reproduce success, or design the right solutions.

Don’t take the name of Hacker in vain.

We need people to think for themselves, to challenge facts and beliefs, to understand how things work. We need them to be creative, to have their own views, to push each other.

A great recruit is both an expert at what he does and a great fit with the team.

The company is its people. Its results and soul come from the convergence of its team members. We see Shyft as a castle, every new member is a brick, a solid one. Together, they build a unique piece of architecture with all its variety and imperfection.

Finding an expert is the easy part. Finding someone that is exactly the right person for the company, the team and the job is an entirely different challenge.

We don’t want robots. We want people who will match with the already diverse crew we’ve put together.

Some of our members are bigger than life, others are more discreet. Some are parents, others singles. All have unusual back stories. It all works because communication and empathy are central.

How can we find those rare fit? We hack!

Toss your resume

We want to understand how a candidate works. Not only does a resume influences your first impression but it also pushes you to put candidates in easily understandable boxes, and to limit yourself to the surface. It’s a one-way selection, it kills the discussion.

So we dropped it.

Instead, we’ve designed a process that we’ll gradually unroll and adjust in the coming weeks (I’ll update the article to share what we learned and how we improved it).

Step 1: tell us who your are

So how can you screen candidates without a resume? We’ve decided to let them do the talking.

We ask them to send a basic selfie video or audio message to answer four points. We ask them:

to give their opinion on a topic related to their expertise

to suggest a solution to a problem they’ll have in their position at Shyft

to explain why they’re the right fit for Shyft

to tell us what they like about Shyft.

We know damn well, the answers won’t amaze us, we won’t see in the soul of the applicants but that’s not what a screening is about. A screening is about getting rid of those who don’t care enough and don’t match. With that screening we’ll know a bit about their qualifications without being influenced by their backgrounds, which should enable us to have more diverse profiles, we’ll know whether they’re looking for the right thing, and if they can communicate easily.

Step 2: show us you’re an expert

Which expertise can you bring to our company?

If it’s a match, we move on to an in-person (or Skype when needed) meeting to understand how the applicant work and how skillful he or she is. It’s also our opportunity to tell them what the job will be like. It has to be a transparent discussion.

We do everything we can to make the applicant feel comfortable: we give them clear directions before the meeting to take that pain off, we break a few jokes, and create a friendly atmosphere.

The interview is led by the person that understands the technical aspects of the job the most. The vibe might be cool but the discussion is technical. We want to know what that person has done before and how he/she handles situations.

Step 3: feel the vibe

The next and last meeting is all about the company culture and the personality of the applicant.

Anyone from the office can join. We want the applicant to see who we are as a team, and we want the team to assess whether that person will match. What we want is to recreate that vibe when team members start an impromptu conversation while asking their colleague for help.

So we turn those interviews into lunches, mid-day snacks or end-of-the-day drinks.

We use the applicant’s achievements to start a discussion. We ask them about their passions and tell them about ours. Passions are essential at Shyft. Most members have personal projects ranging from feminist blogging, large social communities to daily motivational quotes.

We ask them to tell us about the countries they lived in or the experiences that shaped them. Having an international and diverse team is crucial when you build an international product and want to foster creativity. Some members have grown up between countries, others have lived in countries very different from theirs. This is the thing that makes an empathic team.

By connecting with the personal life of the applicant, we don’t just tell them we value them as unique individuals, we find ways to connect and bring down the walls.

We want our candidates to see us as we are.

Interested in applying? Check out our openings.