What I look for in a new hire

• Name: Brendan McGovern, 39
• Company: Meetup, New York City

We look for scrappiness: Hungry, resourceful top performers who understand Meetup's mission. We call our work style DIO, a riff on DIY that stands for "Do it Ourselves." Our best hires don't rely on management to tell them how to work or what to do.

We developed a litmus test. We push the candidate to articulate why Meetup is the right place for them and sell us on why they need to work here as opposed to any other startup in New York. We want to uncover if they resonate with Meetup's mission of helping people change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.

We've seen that hiring for scrappiness has resulted in some great employees who've worked their way to the top, from entry-level to department heads. When our operations manager started years ago, her first task was to buy herself a desk. Since then we've grown. We have 93 employees and we fully equip them, but we like to hire people who wouldn't balk at a similar request.

NEXT: Ambition