Recruit for effectiveness, not degrees

What do Facebook, Dell, WordPress, FitBit, Stripe, Twitter, Spotify, Whatsapp, Asana, Square, Microsoft, Oracle , Uber and the Virgin Group have in common?

Yes, they’re tech companies, but you can’t ignore the fact that all of them; yes all of them, were founded by college dropouts. 

Do I have your attention? Good. Let’s begin.   

This, is a true story. 

We have an individual on the team, who was in a function of serving us coffee and generally responsible for housekeeping around our office. 

One day, I saw him having some free time and I decided to ask him to utilize his free time in testing our games. After all, how hard is it to load a game and push some buttons for an expected outcome, right? 

This individual did that far better than what any of us would have done. He didn’t just follow the small test case I had given, he went above and beyond and came back to me with a huge list of bugs and feedback on improvements I hadn’t expected.

Then I upped the ante and asked him to execute some complex cases. He did that too. He would test, and understand the complexities of the game we were testing better than most of us, and actually beat us at our own game (no kidding!).

So, I did what we do best at Junglee Games, which is elevate effective individuals to a level where they really are in flow with their role and responsibility. We made him an official QA Tester, gave him a desk, laptop and the full testing suite that comes with a full-time QA Testing role. 

Let me highlight that this is a person who never finished his education and never thought they’d go beyond asking how much sugar do you want in your coffee.

Now, six years later, he’s still one of our best QA Testers and a testament that at Junglee Games you don’t need formal education to succeed and achieve your life goals.

He isn’t the only one. We also have a Civil Engineer who is one of our best Software Engineers. And people who studied Hospitality, Biology and Psychology are handling our HR, Operations and Customer Support. Our Head of Customer Experience has an MSc. in Nutrition and Dietetics, while an individual who still runs a salon is contributing to our SEO.

Everywhere you look in Junglee Games, you’ll find each team with some individuals who have formal education unrelated to their roles. Others may have not even completed their formal education, but are still in roles where they excel. Their effectiveness, and impact is so positive that we’d be hard-pressed to find anyone better.

The key to their success in their role of course isn’t education. It’s passion. They’re driven by the passion of the purpose of their role, to the level of being the best they can be in their position. You know what I’m talking about. When you do something you love you lose track of time, and it doesn’t feel like a job. When you work on something, that brings you both inner joy and a sense of fulfillment that this is what you were always meant to do or be. They find that everyday at Junglee Games. 

Yes, their education, whatever level, may have given them tools and training to understand and succeed in the real world. But it’s their passion for doing what they do everyday that makes them such a great fit for their role.

And when we look around us, it’s not just at Junglee Games or in tech companies. Everywhere you will find people in different places and different roles, where their formal education or any initial level of education is not aligned with what they now do; yet they’re very successful at it. You could tell someone all their life that they’re supposed to study to become a teacher, but if you’re Mary Kom, you’ll ignore conventional wisdom to pursue what really drives you. What you’re passionate about. And eventually, success will find you. 

The images you’re seeing throughout this article are of the Wright brothers in flight.

They didn’t finish high school. They had little to no support and funding compared to their competition (yes others were trying what they were trying at the same time). Yet their passion for human flight gave them every bit of energy, ingenuity and grit to be the first to achieve stable commercial flight. 

So, how about you, are you passionate about what you do everyday?

A natural question from a prospective candidate would then be “Does this mean you don’t care about my degree at Junglee Games?”. Let me clarify. No, we don’t ignore formal education at Junglee Games. It’s still a strong pillar to our success and why our team carries the expertise it does. We’ve got Neuroscientists, PhDs and Data Scientists all driving critical decisions of when, why and how we take product/marketing/tech decisions. And their formal training is crucial to our success, as their expertise guides us forward. Every one of these individuals uses key elements of their training and skills set, picked up through their education or post-education experiences, to be super effective in their role. And many of them have taken the role we placed them in, for the first time. Without them, we would quite literally be shooting in the dark.  

But we don’t filter applicants to a role just because they don’t have ‘a’ degree. What we do at Junglee Games is always look for results. We look for passion and results in their profiles, and then interview them. It’s how we found one of our producers, who without formal education after school, has a profile that clearly shows a deep passion for making games.

How do we even know during an interview that the person, though not formally educated, can succeed in the role they’ve applied for? We don’t. We speak to them, give them some assignments related to the role, see how they do and take the call. Remember the story of the pantry boy who became QA? We simply gave him the test to play our games, and he did well, so we took the call.

During our conversations and through the test for the role, we look for effectiveness and never pre-judge candidates on their backgrounds or education. If they pass the test and we feel they’re a good fit for our culture, we bring them onboard. We hire fast, evaluate with frequent checkpoints and give constant feedback to coach and elevate everyone.

For example, say you have an interest in joining our Customer Success team. We won’t ask you about your degrees or where you went to school. We’ll simply test to see if you’re great at empathizing with people and their concerns, and if you can resolve user issues quickly, while making sure you put customers first. If you do, you’re in.

Imagine studying for years thinking you’re going to advise people on what to eat, how and why. Then one day, you find your life’s calling is in helping users resolve their product experience challenges, receiving a tremendous amount of love and good karma from every single user you help...who knew? 

We did.

At Junglee Games we value you, for what you can do, not where you come from, or what/where you studied. We don’t judge what you did, we judge what you do. And if we see that spark, and passion which ignites the path to our success, we bring you along for the ride by putting you in the seat you best deserve. 

And trust me, it’s a pretty comfy seat with a great view, bumpy road, but fun ride.

To those looking for a role that makes work feel like play… I say, follow your passion.

To those looking to build a team of individuals who excel at their role…I say, hire for passion.

And to those passionate about joining us… yes, we’re hiring. Apply here