Great article on lessons learned from hiring FAST from Reid Hoffman, founder of PayPal and LinkedIn, and early investor in Facebook.

Excerpt:

That reminds me of Google’s decision to hire only people with very high GPAs from elite universities. As a heuristic, there’s obviously collateral damage—there are many smart people you’re not allowed to hire—but it makes sense if your goal is to hire a large number of smart generalists quickly.

That created a lot of frustration. “I can’t hire my friend who doesn’t have that qualification, but I know that he’s really good.” And the company says, “Yeah, sorry. That’s the way we execute as we blitzscale. We need a simple heuristic so that we can focus on what really matters.” Another benefit of Google’s decision to hire only from elite universities is that it helped create and maintain a coherent culture as the company scaled.