Great comments on hiring from Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, Guy Kawasaki His philosophy of hiring? Simple—hire someone who complements your weaknesses--and someone better than you. Obvious? Of course. Often done? Of course not! Many people hire people just like themselves, thinking, hey if I’m successful, some like me will also succeed. Or they hire someone who make them look good. But that’s short-sighted. Kawasaki is spot on when he discusses the flaws in today’s approach, especially among start up founders.

The more relevant parts of that New York Time article:

Q. How do you hire?

A. The most important thing is that you hire people who complement you and are better than you in specific areas. Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players. But others hire below their skills to make themselves look good. So B players hire C players. C players hire D players, etc.
Time and again in Silicon Valley, two engineers who are the founders of a company have a very unique perspective. They believe that engineering is hard, and everything else is easy. Sales, marketing, finance, operations, manufacturing — all that is easy.
With this perspective, they think that if they set their mind to it, they could be the best V.P. of manufacturing, best V.P. of finance, best V.P. of marketing, best V.P. of sales, best V.P. of everything.
However, in a perfect world, someone who is a truly great engineer and founder would appreciate the difficulty of marketing, and hire a marketing person who is far better than he or she is.
In a perfect world, you would take pride in the fact that you hired someone who is better than you. Hardly anybody has that attitude, though.
The second ideal goal would be to make yourself dispensable — what greater accomplishment is there than the organization running well without you? It means you picked great people, prepared them and inspired them. And if executives did this, the world would be a better place.

Q. Talk more about this notion of dispensability.

A. Insecure people would rather see the company fail without them than succeed. It’s because their ego is so large that the thought of a company succeeding without them is incomprehensible. They would rather see it fail.

Q. Other thoughts on hiring?

A. A major issue is with how interviews are conducted. There’s a body of research that says you should conduct first- and second-round interviews by phone, not in person.
This is because when you interview in person, many variables come into play that have nothing to do with competence. So is the person good-looking or not? Is the person dressed appropriately or not? Lots of factors can sidetrack you. There should also be a checklist of questions that you ask every candidate on the phone instead.
Another issue is that most people believe they are good interviewers, and that they are good judges of character. They’re wrong. That’s why you see clones of the boss in some companies: everybody is white, tall and from an East Coast private school.