Jan 27, 2016

A few months ago I read an interesting Blog post by a famous photographer Yuri Arcurs from Denmark. If you wish, you can also get acknowledged with the article, the author and the blog.

In this post Yuri talks about a very valuable advice his father gave him when he was just a kid. I am talking about the Weekend Test, which is used for making decisions about partnering/working with a specific person or group of people.

The essence of this test is very simple - if you want to make an important decision about a partnership or hiring someone, think about whether you'd want to spend your weekend in this person's company. If the answer is yes, do not hesitate to start working with this person. However, if the answer is negative, it is best to ponder over the decision once more, and most likely you will refuse this cooperation.

Yuri gives a story from personal experience as am example. One day he was offered an investment project worth about a million USD. He liked the project, the prospects were pretty good. However, some negative feeling caused by the alleged future partners did not leave Yuri. Then he took the advice of his father. Yuri asked himself - would I spend a weekend with my  potential partners or not. The answer was negative and he refused the offer. A few months later the project fell apart due to the fact that the creators quarreled among themselves, like a Swan, crayfish and Pike. If not for this test, Yuri almost certainly would have lost money. 

Think about it even now - many people with whom you now work together or just know each other and intersect in any matters, able to pass this test? And how you have them going all smoothly? 

In fact, many still make decisions about working together with people based on their education, work experience, recommendation letters or any other papers. Also of no small importance is the appearance and, of course, the ability to communicate and present themselves. However, it gives a rather superficial view of the man. Many of the students are very little motivated to actively work and think enough trapped for some posts. I think correct would be to choose the right team based on a deeper view of his personality. Say from experience that often educated and experienced employees tend to be less effective than people without experience, which you have taken practically from the street and taught everything themselves. 

To judge a person on first impression these days is not effective. You can even consider my example. Usually, for those people who know nothing about me, I can seem quite rude and unsociable person, maybe even crazy. There may be several reasons. Perhaps someone caught me during a hot conversation with someone from the team on a negative topic. Others to catch me during the debriefing by someone's "the herd". Maybe I was just walking down the corridor with a serious face. Also my style of communication is far from ideal to force the blemish of self-education. However, few people knows that everything I do, I do with wide open soul or not doing at all. This also applies to the Studio and my work. 

When we built Milles - our workshop for the office and for our team - I had been above all for the comfort of future employees and visitors. That is why we have the best equipment, comfortable office and more. No one else so not bothered about such trifles as, for example, the smell in the room. Certainly, while visiting us, have you noticed how smells. 

This I mean that every coin always has two sides. And in order to take a complete solution and to form an objective opinion about a person, you must know him better and take advantage of the more original methods.

Also recently read an article about that in the West, many HR managers are already preferred ratings in Klout and other social networks. Because: 

• the way a person looks and behaves in social media can tell us a great deal and give a scale representation of the identity

• this is a very important very popular in the web for any company. Accordingly, more socially "promoted" people can leave a more positive mark in the company. 

So be progressive - when you choose a the right team and partners, worry no longer about the education, experience, and mental and social qualities of people.

So we try to do in Milles Team. Of course, we had interviews with pretty standard questions when receiving to the team. However, personally, I can say that not only gladly would have spent the weekend with all the guys, but do it regularly. Most we rest together regularly, including on corporate football matches on Saturdays.