Hiring employees is all about finding a good fit
Goodnight did not have a specific hiring strategy during SAS's early days, and still believes that simply looking for employees who fit in is the best recipe for success.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Jim Goodnight, July 22, 1999. Interview I-0073. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
JM: How did you hire people? What kinds of things mattered to you when you made your choices about who to bring into the firm, company?
JG: Back in the early days, I can't recall hiring more than probably half a dozen people. The people that did the hiring always worked under me as we grew the organization that way. Mainly, we would be looking for people that we felt would fit in and work hard and make a contribution to the company.
JM: No special key recipe or--.
JG: No, not really. I think a lot of that stuff that you hear today is marketing hype about how you're going to go out and set these standards for this, that, and the other. Even today, I think the main thing that we're looking for is people that will fit here. We have tried to maintain our corporate culture over the years, even though we've gotten up to six thousand people now. It's important to be hiring somebody that you feel like they'll fit into the organization.
