Recruiting digital natives

Wanted: 30 leading lights

Palomar5 organizers appealed to unique thinkers to explore tomorrow’s workplace by releasing a video. The four-minute clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgHO5x-hO4A shows a bedside lamp, which refuses to turn off – despite its owner’s efforts. Eventually, the lamp ends up on the garbage heap. Someone finds it and takes it to a shop full of similar lamps that all light up and shine together. “Through blogs and online communities and by contacting international talent networks, we received over 1600 applications from more than 60 countries,” explains Dominik Wind, responsible for recruitment. “Some sent us a packed suitcase to say hey, look, I’m ready for action. Some sent videos, others created Websites on the topic or linked sites to their own Web pages.”

Wind and his colleagues had the task of sifting through the 600 potential candidates. His key aim was to form an international team of passionate individuals who would cooperate with each other. “We were looking for interesting resumes, creativity and, last but not least, a certain degree of humor. It was also important to see how they could express complex ideas in simple terms.” The organizers interviewed 68 hopefuls via Skype – and accepted 30 of them. “We chose the first twelve pretty quickly and then went on to build up the rest of the team”