Hire Healthy People

The Illustrious DHH has a great post up on the 37Signals' blog about how he enjoys working with Family people that I really agree with, and not just because I'm now a family person myself.  The post really isn't about working with parents; it's about working with people who keep a healthy work-life balance.  Having immutable constraints on your time forces you to ignore the little details and get things done.

One of the things we ask in our interview process here at Effective UI is whether or not you're involved in any extra-curricular activities (having a family certain counts.)  Regardless of what those are, it shows us you're probably forced to keep a healthy perspective on work when you're doing other things as well.

Another good characteristic of people who live outside of work that DHH didn't mention is that they know how to commit.  If you're committed to volunteering or playing soccer or doing anything that requires regularly sacrificing your time, it's more likely that you'll commit to our company and be a more enjoyable person to work with.  Being committed means you're more likely to enjoy your time with us, more likely to get involved in fixing company processes, and more likely to care about what happens to the rest of us.  No one concerned with company culture wants to hire a mercenary.