Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 416: A Good Job Spec

purposed worKING No Comments

A good, well written job spec can make all the difference in who applies for a job and the ease by which a decision is made about who is the best candidate. If we know what we are looking for and can spell it out well then it will entice those who we want and weed out those we don’t. Within all of this the spec has to also be compelling to someone who is just learning about our company. It has to be a call to action for either the candidate seeing it or the recruiter who is hunting for the best person. I love Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 ad in London’s Times, recruiting a crew to sail with him on his exploration of the South Pole:

Wanted. Men for hazardous journey.
Low wages. Bitter cold.
Long hours of complete darkness.
Safe return doubtful.
Honor and recognition in the event of success.

He ended up with more people than he could hire. What this job spec does is get at the heart of what type of person he valued. He was looking for courage, endurance, stamina, and adventure. When we hire, do we think enough about the core set of values and principles that we want within a person? Bad hires are usually not because of a person not having the right skill set, it is usually about the person not fitting culturally with the company, which brings us back to values and principles. In one of the first stories of hiring in the Bible, Jethro tells Moses what kind of people he should “select” to replace some of Moses’ duties. We read this in Exodus 18:21; “But find some capable, honest men who fear God and hate bribes.” Again, we see values and principles as core to the specifications. If today you are hiring, or being hired, don’t forget the importance of putting values first and then letting all the rest flow from there.

Reference: Exodus 18:21 (New Living Testament)