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Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, talks about leadership.

First, let me say that I ordered these sandals from Zappos and had them at my door less than 20 hours later. And that was with the free shipping option, not any kind of express service. So that makes me very pro-Zappos right now. So here's Hsieh:

Tony Hsieh: Every employee understands that part of their job description is actually to live and inspire the culture in others. A lot of it is done on the front end; during the hiring process we do two sets of interviews. The first set is kind of the standard -- the hiring manager and his or her team will look for someone to a fit within the team, relevant experience, technical ability and so on, but then we do a separate, second set of interviews with our HR team, and they look purely for a culture fit, and they have to pass both in order to be hired. We have passed on a lot of smart and talented people that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line but if they are not a culture fit, we won't hire them.

Tom Heath: What do you ask them, when you want to know if they can fit in the culture, and whether they will or not?

Tony Hsieh: We offer tours to the public, and our headquarters are in Las Vegas. We will pick you up at the airport, ride in the Zappos shuttle, take an hour long tour and then drop you off at the hotel.

For candidates we do the same thing: We pick them up, give them a tour, and then they spend the day interviewing. But at the end of the interview process, our head of recruiting goes back to the shuttle driver and asks them how they were treated. If they were not treated well when they thought they were off the clock then we won't hire them, it's not even a question.

Full post as published by Althouse on July 14, 2010 (boomark / email).