Mark Zuckerberg Has a Standard Hiring Question

There's one question Mark Zuckerberg needs to ask before he'll hire anyone for the Facebook team—and it's a question he asks of himself, not of the applicant. Specifically, he told a group in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, he asks himself if he'd be happy working for the applicant. "I’ve developed over time a simple rule which is that I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person," Zuck said, according to the Blaze and Tech Times. "It's a pretty good test and I think this rule has served me well. I think as long as you have that as your rule for picking the people you work with, you're not going to go wrong."

"What it does mean, in an alternate universe, if things were different and I didn’t start the company, I would be happy to work for that person," he continued. "Or if Facebook just disappeared and I had to go find something else to go do, then I’d be happy to go work for that person." It's a good idea to have "a check in place so that you really only hire the best people," he said, "and if you’re building a big organization, then it also works many layers down. If each person is only hiring people to work directly for them who they would work for, then you’re probably going to get a pretty strong organization." (Meanwhile, there's a Facebook founder you've never heard of.)