My Dad has been saying since I was a kid, “Hire great people and your job will be easy.” I intentionally rejected that idea.

And all of my hires have been failures. I’m a “just get it done” kind of guy, so my skill set and aptitudes are not ideal for the slow and methodical filtering that is necessary to find and hire great people. Thankfully, my fiance is also my business partner. She’s a much better judge of character than I am.

I’m a systems guy. I used to think that if you had a great system — like a McDonald’s franchise — then it wouldn’t matter who you hire. The system would ensure that the business ran smoothly.

Not so. For most businesses where you want (and need) people to stick around, a focus on culture is mandatory. And the key to corporate culture is matching the environment with each stakeholder’s character.

Several years ago my fiancé interviewed a young Texan when we needed help in the warehouse (for a different business). A mutual friend told her, “Trust me, he’ll work out.” She hired him.

He started packing boxes in the warehouse. Later, he became our production manager. Then our sales manager. Now he’s running the company.

Christian Rawles had no direct experience for any of the positions we hired him for. A resume would never have told the whole story. But he has qualities that are way more important to a business, qualities that are impossible to discern from a resume or from a typical interview. And working with Christian has been outstanding because of them.

In the future, I’ll approach hiring much differently: I’ll hire character regardless of skills. Skills can be learned and unlearned, changed like paint on a wall. Not so with character; it’s the foundation that the whole house depends on.

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