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HR PRACTICES AND PROCESSES THAT MAKE SUSTAINABLE VALUES STICK 65

want to make certain everyone on staff is aligned with the company’s values, beliefs,
and mode of governance. What may be surprising is the degree of diversity one finds
at such companies, despite what would seem to be a fairly narrow set of hiring crite-
ria. In the case of Melaver, Inc., the key to managing both alignment and diversity,
ensuring clear focus on core values while also ensuring the staff does not lapse into
group think, is its consensual group hiring practice.
The practice, as mentioned earlier, is not without problems. First, the group setting
for interviews, in which numerous staff members all participate in the conversation,
seems to favor extroverted candidates over introverted ones. It’s a bias the company
needs to be careful to counteract, to the extent that it can. Secondly, this group hiring
process is very time consuming. Hiring for a new position literally takes months and,
if that weren’t enough, there have been times when, because of the fast-moving nature
of the company, the needs for that particular new position changed during the course of
the interview process. Moreover, given the lengthy nature of a hire, there’s strong col-
lective pressure to make a hire from the short list of candidates that eventually makes
it to the group interview process, since no one wants to start the search from scratch.
That pressure at times creates added tension and anxiety within the company, as the
search committee wants to finish the process once and for all, while others on staff may
prefer to wait for a better fit to come along. Third, it is very rare for staff members to
reach total agreement on a hire: consensus, yes; total agreement, no. In fact, occasion-
ally, the company has hired a new staff member when that person’s direct supervisor
actually preferred another candidate. Fourth, because these group interviews are struc-
tured like informal conversations among team members and don’t follow a standard
script of questions, interviews differ dramatically. Team members often tell me candi-
dates get the interview they themselves script, which I can understand. But the HR pol-
icy side of me feels a certain discomfort with comparisons among candidates that
appear to be objective but, in fact, contain systemic subjective elements. No one said
hiring was a science. But this particular company seems to view it as almost pure art.
Having said that, there are strong positives running in favor of this approach to
hiring. First, there is no arguing with success. Since instituting this ritual about five
years ago, the company has retained virtually every single person it has hired. Second,
it gives the prospective candidate a clear, composite picture of what this company is
about. The short list of candidates who make it to the final round of a hiring process
all have the hard skill set to do the job. At this point, the company wants to know pri-
marily if its culture is one that the candidate would not only feel comfortable in, but
one that would enable the person to be at his or her best. In this sense, the notion of
fit and alignment is somewhat misunderstood. The company presents its culture to
the candidate, and the candidate actually evaluates his or her fit with it. Of course, the
obverse is also true: the company is evaluating the candidate’s fit. Having participated
in a number of these interviews, I can say that active listening will oftentimes tell you
whether a prospective candidate gels with the culture or not.
I do have questions regarding the future feasibility of such an approach, such as
whether, as the company continues to grow, it can afford to devote the time this process