Fast Lane
Getting straight A’s
How to find the right people
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Cleveland | March 2009
Page 1 of 2
Chris Tjotjos
president and CEO, LOGOS Communications Inc.
Chris Tjotjos occasionally
asks himself, “Am I valuable to the organization?” It may seem like an odd
question for the founder, president and CEO of LOGOS
Communications Inc. to ask,
but Tjotjos says he does it to
reinforce his commitment to
lifelong learning.
LOGOS, a provider of IT network communication solutions, posted $22.5 million in
2007 revenue and exceeded
$30 million for 2008.
Smart Business spoke with
Tjotjos about balancing your
place in the organization and
how playing golf with potential employees can help you
find “A” players.
Q. How do you assemble a
good management team?
It’s got to start with finding
‘A’ players. ‘A’ players attract
‘A’ players. If you don’t have
the right members in place, it’s
hard to put the team together.
We try to have a rigorous
recruitment process. We’ve
been blamed for taking too
long to make a decision, but
it’s really hard to tell if somebody is great or not in one or
two interviews. Sometimes it
takes three or four.
Plato said you can learn
more about a person in a day
at play than a year at work.
We’ve taken that to another
level. We might take someone
out to dinner. If the opportunity comes up, we might even
take them on a round of golf.
That way, you can see how
that person acts when he hits
a bad shot. Does he bump the
ball when no ones looking?
Does he cheat and prop it up?
Is he cordial about this or that? Is he aware of the other
person [or] if he’s walking in
their line? These are things
you can’t get out of an interview, but you can get from a
day at play.
Someone can hold an interview for an hour, then you hire
them and you say, ‘Gosh, I didn’t notice they did this,’ or
‘They really annoy me about
that,’ and if they annoy you,
they’re probably going to
annoy your customers.
Q. How do you know
if an interviewee is the
right fit?
We can’t play with
everyone. It has to be
the right timing and the
right role. Plus, not
everybody golfs, and we
haven’t taken anyone
bowling yet.
So you really have to
see in the interview. Is it
one of those where you
set it up for an hour, and
after the hour, you don’t
want to stop talking to
the person? Or is it one
of those where you set it
up for an hour, and 20
minutes into it, you
want it to end?
There’s just something
not there — they’re not energizing you at all. They’re not
giving you any new ideas.
They haven’t read anything
recently that changed their
thinking; they’re just the same
kind of person they were 10 or
20 years ago.
So I listen to see what they
are reading, what new ideas
they are putting in their
heads. Because if you’re not
a student of lifelong learning,
you’re probably not going to
be that exciting and energizing to me.
