Andrew King of Ocado Technology on Great Hiring Practices and Designing Culture

Show Notes

• 00:22 Introductions
• 00:42 The goal of building the best tech in the best possible way
• 01:12 People are irrationally fallible, in predictable ways
• 01:47 Describing context effects – anything that happens in decision making that is altered by the context in which the decision is made
• 02:28 Examples of how context effect plays out
• 02:50 The compromise effect – when faced with a choice of options we try to avoid the extremes
• 03:30 Ways that Ocado is using these ideas to improve their hiring process
• 05:20 Distinguishing criteria for interviewing questions to help avoid the context effect
• 05:45 Design your interviewing questions very carefully to explore the things that will actually help in the decision-making process
• 07:06 The Ocado culture of building exactly what is needed rather than using off the shelf products
• 07:48 The content of an interview is the candidate’s responses, not the questions that are asked
• 08:20 Identify what someone in the role needs to know and craft the questions to expose that knowledge
• 08:56 The value of behavioral interviews to explore a values match
• 09:18 If someone doesn’t pass the behavioral interview they are not even considered for a role, irrespective of their technical competency
• 10:07 Designing a culture and ways to help imbed cultural values in a group
• 10:38 There is no single approach – different techniques and tools will be applicable in different areas of the organisation
• 11:09 There is no easy way to imbed a culture – you have to work out the nuances in the different areas
• 11:32 Follow the principles rather than blindly following a process
• 11:42 Changing the culture of an organisation takes up to seven years
• 12:03 The importance of the onboarding process to the culture of an organisation
• 13:05 The way the couching group support the various areas of the organisation to support the culture
• 13:57 In order to be effective the coaches need high empathy and facilitation skills – they are part of the organisation
• 14:49 To adopt some of these ideas, use a Kanban approach – start where you are now, identify what needs fixing and work on one thing at a time
• 15:32 Identify where the biggest problem is and address that first
• 15:58 Use small steps and nudges an environment that brings out the best in people
• 16:13 Complex effects will be rife – it is inevitable
• 16:32 Use the sprint backlog idea from Scrum or WIP Limits in Kanban to help the people leading the change not become overwhelmed – focus on the next small step rather than the entire problem space

Mentioned:

• Ocado Technology
• Email Andrew