Hiring a Golden Team for Coworking Space: 5 Values of Jooble You Should Adopt

500 million people in 71 countries around the world used a job search service Jooble.  Now the company employs more than 500 people. They are selected on the basis of their values.

Why does a company need values?

As kids, Mom and Dad warned us not to be friends with "bad" boys and girls. It's unlikely they read psychology books back then, but through worldly wisdom, they understood that we are something in between our five closest friends.

We spend at least eight hours five days a week with our colleagues. That's more than we do with loved ones, parents, or children. But what kind of people are they? What are their values? Can they be trusted?

Employment in Big and Small Coworking Spaces — What Is the Difference?

If the coworking space is small, with up to 10 employees, just talk to the director or founder. Any company and a coworking space is not an exception, is an extension of the founder and his values. If you have chemistry with him, then you will get along with the others.

But if the coworking brand is bigger, it gets more interesting. Founders choose people who are close to them in spirit, but they are, of course, somewhat different. These "a little bit different" begin to employ people who are also close in spirit, but somewhat different, and so on.

The result is a hodgepodge of people with different beliefs who are unlikely to communicate outside the office. The only thing they have in common is business KPIs. And it is good if these KPIs exist.

When we at Jooble realized all this, we decided we did not want to do it that way. We spend a huge part of our lives at work, and it should bring us pleasure. An important role in this is played by the people who surround us. And that's not a corporate slogan. It's a completely selfish desire to surround ourselves with cool people.

Now the hard question is, what kind of people are these? What values should they have?

We did not get too wise and looked at those people who are already there, whom we admired, respected, and wanted to take an example from them. That's how the five values of Jooble came about. We want to see them in every person who joins our team, regardless of position.

I'll describe them below, even though the recruiting team berates me for it. They fear that it will make it easier for people to prepare for interviews, but I don't believe that. These values are shaped in us all our lives, and no matter how smart you are, you can't spend an hour imitating a locus of inner control or openness to people.

 

Value 1. Locus of Internal Control. I Am the Cause of Everything That Happens to Me.

It sounds simple. As soon as you read this, of course, you immediately agreed, "Yes, only I and no one else is responsible for my life."

Now think back to the last time you were late for a meeting. What did you say to your interlocutor? Probably something like, "Oh, I'm sorry, there was so much traffic around town." It's unlikely you said, "I didn't check the traffic before I went out, so I didn't plan my commute time correctly."

In the first case, you have traffic to blame — it's the external locus of control. In the second case, you are to blame — that's the internal locus of control.

This very simple in meaning belief opens up an incredible treasure trove of energy. Now you can't blame the contractor for not delivering the project on time. You're the one who didn't supervise the phases of the work. Now it is not your manager who is an idiot for not understanding your brilliant idea, but you, because you failed to communicate its brilliance. Now it's not the ISP's fault that the data center is down, it's your fault for not providing a backup.

Life becomes surprisingly easy when a person understands that only he and not mom, dad, the manager, or the president are responsible for his life. You are the main creator of everything that happens to you in life.

We are looking for people who have understood this.

 

Value 2. Passion for the Cause. The Cause Is the Ultimate Reward.

Mihai Csiksentmihai's book, Flow, has a study of happiness. The author wasn't trying to answer the metaphysical question, "What is happiness?" He wanted to understand the moments in which people are happiest. I will not retell the book, it is better to read it yourself, but I will briefly formulate the main thesis.

Most often a person is happy in a state of flux. It is a state when a person is 100% focused on a task, be it work or communication with relatives.

Developers are very familiar with this state when there is an idea or a task that consumes you completely. When time loses its meaning, you do not think about hunger, you are not distracted by external stimuli, you are completely immersed in your work, you create. This is the very state of flow in which one is happy.

In a sense we could phrase this value as "we are looking for happy people," but that would be too vague. We are looking for employees who know how to focus their attention on the task, and therefore — to be in a state of flow and enjoy what they do.

 

Value 3. Openness to People. Seeing Through the Eyes of Others

Imagine, you are telling about your idea, and your colleague starts to criticize it: "It is a bad idea, because...".

In fact, anything after the words "it's a bad idea" you no longer hear. Why? All because of our brains. We have three of them: the reptilian brain, the limbic brain, the neocortex. Of the three, the oldest is the reptilian brain. It's about 200 million years old, and it's responsible for the basic principles of survival. It is the fastest, that is, it is the first to turn on, and it has one problem: it does not understand scale. At all.

When you are criticized, the reptilian brain builds approximately the following chain: my idea is criticized, I will be fired, I will not be able to buy food, I will die. What to do? Defend myself, of course!

Our defense in response to criticism is a normal reaction that evolution has shaped over millions of years. But it also has a serious flaw. Your idea may really be bad because you didn't have the data to look at the idea from a different angle.

Openness to people is the ability to quickly transfer control from your reptilian brain to the neocortex, which is responsible for analytical thinking. The ability to hear the other person with a sincere desire to understand why their point of view is different from yours, what data or experience they have that challenges your conclusions.

We are all different, we perceive information differently, we have different upbringings and experiences. But those who have learned to take a genuine interest in the person and his or her point of view, greatly enrich their inner world and make better decisions.

 

Value 4. Developmental Orientation. The Striving to Be Better Every Day Than Yesterday

Many people perceive development only as a constant improvement of their professional skills. Yes, of course, our generation has firsthand experience of how quickly the world changes, and if we do not update our knowledge, it becomes outdated at a catastrophic rate. Continually developing yourself as a professional is a minimum program.

What's beyond that? How often do you write down the decisions you've made, and after a while analyze how right you were? What facts or data did you rely on when making that decision?

This is called reflection-going beyond yourself as an object and looking at yourself as a subject. Do you have enough skills to handle this work? Are you developing the right skills to be successful in six months, a year from now?

And how often do you ask for feedback from your colleagues, supervisor, loved ones? Surely they see a lot from the outside that you don't. How often do you give feedback yourself?

Developmental orientation is the skill of constantly questioning your beliefs. And in doing so, not losing the ability to make decisions.

 

Value 5. Owner's Mindset. If Not Me, Then Who?

We don't like everything that happens around us. For example, we may think that this person shouldn't be put on a project, or that the new HR team policy is bullshit, or that the company buys bad coffee. There are a million, "I wish I was doing this, then it would be wow, not what it is now." Don't whine, go do it!

We're looking for people who don't think in functional terms, "This is my part, I'm in charge of it, and it's armageddon all around me." If you don't like something, if you know what's better, go and do it. Can't do it yourself? Find a resource owner, sell him the idea, get the authority and do it. Whining is easy, but changing the world around you is much harder and more exciting.

We are looking for people who understand that if they are the cause of everything that happens, everything depends on them, then they can change anything they want.

 

To Take Away

These were 5 top-secret tactics for coworking space owners, HRs, or managers that choose and hire people for the team. Try to apply them at your flexible workspace and you will never regret your choices.

The article was written by Yana Lukianchuk, Business Development Manager in Jooble.