The Jeff Bezos 3-Question Rule for Hiring New Employees

Hiring employees for both startups and already established companies tends to be a tricky task. When the right person joins your company, the team and the company’s efficiency and productivity will most likely improve as well. This can be attributed to the unique skills and energy that the new person brings to the team. 

The recruitment of the employees based on the beauty and excellence of the candidates’ resumes may not be the smartest thing to do. Jeff Bezos, CEO, and founder of Amazon, in the early stages of his company, came up with strategies to ensure that the best and outstanding candidates are hired. The fruits of his hiring strategies can be seen by the massive growth of the company (Amazon) over the years.

The strategy was in the form of the three questions- the reason it is called ‘The Jeff Bezos 3-Question rule for Hiring New Employees” was written by the Amazon founder 22 years ago. These are three timeless questions that hiring managers have asked the candidates during interviews to determine how suitable for the job they are.

The first is ‘’will you admire this person?’’ secondly, ‘’Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering?’’ and thirdly,’ ‘Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?”

Based on these questions, that should be at the back of an interviewer/hiring manager’s mind. We observe that Mr. Bezos is future-oriented and believes that its success has a lot to do with a particular candidate’s unusual personal characteristics.

In a letter written by Jeff Bezos, he reveals that he’s always tried to work with people he admires. This is because he believes that he will probably learn or take an example from these people. The question is, ”will you admire this person?” 

Both the hiring manager and candidate should have the right answer to this question for the sake of taking on an employee with admirable personality traits like integrity and impressing the interviewer, respectively. 

Some of Amazon’s businesses launched many years ago. Their success has mainly been fueled by the great minds that were hired a couple of years ago.  

An interviewer looking forward to knowing a person’s level of effectiveness on the team they are joining is trying to determine the company’s growth, which can best be derived based on the company values.

Lastly, hiring managers must bring on board superstars. Considering a candidates’ talents like a National spelling Bee championship award can be one way of choosing an employee who will encourage innovative thinking. According to Bezos, they tend to be radical and not the easiest to get along with, however, can play a significant role on the team.