Interviews are quite tricky, especially for a new company — within an hour or so, companies need to take a bet on who their early employees would be, who’d eventually determine the fate of the business. But DoorDash co-founder Tony Xu had an interesting way to find the sort of employees the company would’ve wanted to have on board when it was just starting out.
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu has revealed that he used to give candidates $20 and a plane ticket in his early interviews for the company. “For our early hires, we wanted to test them for bias for action, and very high accountability,” he said in an interview. “(But) our candidates came from very well practiced backgrounds,” he said. “They’re very good at case studies. They’re very good at analysis,” he added.
Xu says he came up with an innovative interview question to find candidates who’d be suitable to run DoorDash in its early days, and be able to run large cities like Chicago, Charlotte and San Francisco for the company. “When candidates came to me for the final interview, I’d basically give them $20 and a plane ticket. I used to ask them to go out into the streets and acquire a hundred customers in the next 8 hours using the $20. They also had the flight ticket in case they wanted to quit the interview,” he said.
“(I used to tell them) I understand that this may not be what you signed up for. But this is what it’s going to feel like on most days where you have no idea what to do, and you’re just going to have to do something about it,” Xu says. By getting candidates to actually find the company 100 customers in 8 hours, Xu managed to test them on skills they’d actually need while working at DoorDash, while also testing their ability to think on their feet and execute a plan.
“If there was a silver bullet question, that probably was one that told quite a lot,” Xu laughs.
DoorDash’s unique approach to hiring seems to have worked. After being founded in 2013, DoorDash grew quickly, and became the US’s premier food delivery platform. The company went public in December 2020, and is now worth $62 billion. And with its $20 and flight ticket interviews, the company seemed to have found the right set of people who’d lead its growth.