Fredrik Carlstrom explains his hiring process.

Question: How Do You Judge Potential?

Fredrik Carlstrom: How do you know if someone’s good? I mean, I think it’s-- I mean, recruiting is obviously a very difficult thing. I think that it’s like a party or a bar, you know? There’s certain places sort of self-- what do you call it, self-curate, I suppose? Like there are certain people who are attracted to you because there’s a commonality. And then I think you use your gut. I mean, you know, you meet them a bunch of times, you talk to them, you ask them questions, you try to be-- you know? I mean, I like people who-- to me it’s all about how you think. How the process-- you know, people come with books or with portfolios, or cases, or things they’ve written and stuff like that. It’s all very good. But it’s at the end of the day, like how do you get here? And that, to me, is what is interesting. I mean, when I came here and I tried to get a job in advertising, I couldn’t get arrested, because there were all these sort of creative recruiters who had given a book or one of those award books by the creative director and said, “This is an ad. This is what an ad looks like. If you see this, call me.” And they would sit and look through my book, and they wouldn’t see that, because a lot of stuff that I’ve done, the magazine I mentioned, or events, or stuff that they just-- they don’t look like ads, which I think is good advertising. So I think the process, the “how did you get there?” is really the interesting thing.

Recorded on: 6/12/08