Who was the first person to recognize Steve Jobs’ potential and offer him a job? It was Nolan Bushnell. By the way, Bushnell is also the founder of Atari, co-inventor of the video game Pong, founder of Chuck E. Cheese, and is a serial entrepreneur. Given Bushnell’s track record in business, and having the badge of honor of the first person to hire Steve Jobs is more than enough evidence that managers, CEO’s, and human resources personnel should listen to his thoughts on hiring.

Bushnell’s recently published book, Finding the Next Steve Jobs, sets forth what he refers to as “pongs”, or general flexible rules managers should abide by in order to find, hire, and retain the best and most creative employees. I starting reading the book after I was fortunate enough to meet Nolan at Paul Allen’s Living Computer Museum opening in April [see picture – from left to right: Chris Espinosa (Apple’s 8th employee), Nolan Bushnell, Bob Frankston (co-creator of VisiCalc), Robert Zaller (co-founder of MITS and co-inventor of the Altair), me, and Eric Zaller]. Bushnell makes some excellent points in regards to finding and hiring the best and most creative employees and provides some examples on how to interview applicants to see their true personalities. The following are a few points Bushnell discusses in the book, and a very good reminder to anyone involved in the hiring process.

Creative employees are arrogant.
Only the arrogant have the strength to push for their ideas. They will continue to push their ideas far past the point any other individual would have relinquished to the pressure to give in or to conform to the “norm.” Arrogance does have its place, it is the vehicle creatives use when their solutions do not match anyone else’s views, which must be the case by definition of being creative. I’ve written before that arrogance can buy a company a lot of lawsuits, especially if a manager or the CEO is arrogant. An arrogant employee cannot create the same level of liability for a company, but they still must proactively be handled and discussed with other the other members of the team. On the other hand, managers and a CEO must be able to manage their arrogance in order to avoid looking like a bully, buying the company a lot of litigation.

Hire creative people and find a position for them. Don’t hire for a position.
Bushnell advocates the idea that a company can find great employees through everyday interactions with people. The truly creative and passionate people will standout, it does not matter what job they are doing, their skills will carry over to their work in any job.

Ignore the applicant’s resume during the interview.
Bushnell also provides some great examples of how to conduct an interview to determine if the applicant is a good fit for the company. He recommends asking applicants about their top ten favorite books, listening to how they describe their life (“The passionless tend to be blamers.”), and asking applicants questions that have no right answers. This allows the interviewer to see how the applicant analyzes a problem.

Finding the Next Steve Jobs is a great resource for anyone in the human resources profession, and for anyone who has the responsibility of finding great employees for their company.