How Weird Are You?

Tony Hsieh is CEO of Zappos.com, the shoe seller that Amazon acquired last year. He handles his firm's organizational culture and core values with a unique approach - -

About five years ago, we formalized the definition of our culture into 10 core values. We wanted to come up with committable core values, meaning that we would actually be willing to hire and fire people based on those values, regardless of job performance. Given that criteria, it's actually pretty tough to come up with core values.

I sent an e-mail to the entire company, asking them what our values should be. The initial list was 37 long, and then we went back and forth and came up with our list of 10. Today, when we interview, we have questions for each one of the core values.

One of our values is, "Create fun and a little weirdness." So the question is: On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you? If you're a 1, you're probably a bit straitlaced for us. If you're a 10, you might be two psychotic for us.

It's not so much the number; it's more how candidates react. Because our whole belief is that everyone is a little weird, so it's really more just a fun way of saying that we recognize and celebrate each person's individuality, and we want their true personalities to shine in the workplace.

We have a culture book. We put it together once a year, and we ask all our employees to write a few paragraphs about what Zappos's culture means to them. It's unedited, so you get to read the good and bad. We make it freely available to visitors and anybody who asks for a copy.