The eventual hiring decision belongs to IS, but if a business partner is not supportive of a candidate, I treat that opinion as a veto and I won't hire the person. It would be foolish of me to hire someone whom the business partner doesn't support from day one.

What do you base your hiring decisions on?

First and foremost I am looking for attitude. If necessary, I can arrange for training in technical subject matter. That is something we can all learn. But I don't know how to teach attitude. I look for individuals' chemistry with the culture of Accellent and the culture of the information services department.

While I believe that we can provide technical training, I do look for bright individuals who have a thirst for learning and for applying what they learn. Do they ask probing questions? Do they think through the consequences of decisions? I need them to be tactically focused while keeping a longer-term strategic vision in mind.

Accellent is a lean organization, so we also need individuals who will roll up their sleeves to get the job done. I'm looking for individuals who are comfortable challenging the status quo but mature enough to know when to fight and when to align. We don't have the time or money to debate endlessly. We want individuals who are action oriented and delivery focused.

There's a job and a home for everybody, but there are lots of employee-employer combinations that aren't right. The hiring manager, company and candidate/employee all have to be willing and mature enough to acknowledge when the match isn't right instead of trying to force a situation. That's the hardest lesson to learn.

Did you receive training about how to hire?

No. I learned the attitude versus technical difference the hard way. I hired the absolute best technically qualified individual for a job back in 1988 or 1989 when I was working in the University of North Carolina's (UNC) graduate computer science department. It was a complete disaster. The individual didn't have any ability to fit into the organization culturally. He was a one-man band who expected all of us to align to his way of thinking. It was a very painful experience; we wasted time and money and eventually had to let the individual go. For me it was the defining moment that shaped my views on hiring.

How did this experience affect your future hiring decisions?

It was a turning point in terms of how I select staff. After this mis-hire, I changed my hiring process completely. I moved to a much different and more formal process where various members of my staff and I each had an assigned role. Some had to check for technical abilities. For instance, one person's sole role in the interview was to describe a work tracking system we used and watch the person's response to it. The candidate's physical and verbal response was a key indicator of whether he or she would fit.