Finding the Right People

What are your top strategies for recruiting, hiring, and developing a team to effectively deliver on business goals?

Yeah, so full disclosure, I did a terrible job hiring early in my career, and I would hire based off of the resume and did the individual have the experiences that we were looking for that match the job description? Obviously, a lot of that can be table stakes, but that’s not the answer. The answer is looking at purpose and looking at personality. And those elements are the… you shouldn’t pass and go, if you don’t have the main characteristics in terms of the outputs or the performance that you’re looking for in a role.
But you want to make sure that the person is seeking to join the organization because they actually believe if you fulfill what your strategy is, that the world would be a better place. So, the most important question I asked in every interview is, why Varian, tell me what motivates you to come here. And it’s a strong correlation to some of our best performers who answered that in an extremely thoughtful way.
And then on the personality piece, I will say to people to see what their reaction is, in interview is that, “Jerks don’t work out here.” What ends up happening if someone is out for themself, if someone is really focused on how they show up as an individual, what generally happens is the body rejects the organ because what we’ve developed is this familial environment where what matters most is our mission, our vision, creating a world without fear of cancer. That’s what matters. That’s why we get up every day. And so if we’re all in on that, then we will be very fulfilled, the financials will yield, the results we want to see because we’re dealing with such a big disease in a challenging market.
And so, you can have the best strategy in the world and the most wonderful looking PowerPoint slides, but if you don’t have the right people, you won’t get there. And so that’s why those pieces are so critical.