A comment by Marcus Frödin pointed me to this excellent article by Ben Horowitz, that I somehow missed when it came out.
Ben offers some great advice on how to select the right kind of people to join your company, particularly when it comes to salespeople:
People who view the world through the me prism might describe a prior company's failure in an interview as follows: "My last job was my e-commerce play. I felt that it was important to round out my resume." Note the use of "my" to personalize the company in a way that it's unlikely that anyone else at the company would agree with. In fact, the other employees in the company might even be offended by this usage. People with the right kind of ambition would not likely use the word "play" to describe their effort to work as a team to build something substantial. Finally, people who use the "me" prism find it natural and obvious to speak in terms of "building out my resume" while people who use the "team" prism find such phrases to be somewhat uncomfortable and awkward, because they clearly indicate an individual goal which is separate from the team goal.
(...)
Throughout our interview process, candidates would take sole credit for landing extremely large deals, achieving impressive goals, and generating company success. Invariably, the candidates who claimed the most credit for deals would have the most difficult time describing the details of how the deal was actually won and orchestrated. During reference checks, others involved in the deals would tell a much different story.
Read the full article here.
If you read this far, you should follow me on twitter here.
