Great interview in the Times today with Tony Hsieh. His company, Zappos, was acquired last year by Amazon for around $1 Billion. Not bad for a little shoe company.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html
He talks about starting LinkExchange right out of college and the culture/work environment of a young, fast-growing internet company. Unfortunately over time the culture changed and he dreaded going to work. So...after 2 years he and his partners sold the company to Microsoft for $265 Million.
Tony says when he went to Zappos he wanted to make sure the employees never lost that sense of excitement and fun and that creating the right culture was/is key to Zappos' success. They formalized the definition of that culture and even created 10 core values that represent it.
To back this up, one of the interview questions the HR team will ask a prospective employee is: "On a scale of 1 to 10 how weird are you?" Unless you've interviewed at Zappos I bet you've never heard that one before.
Personally and professionally I love this approach. It's easy to ask/answer the standard interview questions but asking the one above says a lot about the company, its culture, and the people who work there.
