This week, we had the great opportunity to interview Brian Bjelde, VP of Human Resources at SpaceX, Elon Musk’s illustrious private spaceflight company. Musk secured the 8th spot on the 2017 Employees’ Choice Awards, honoring the Highest Rated CEOs, which is a testament to strong leadership and widespread employee approval ratings.
As the man behind Tesla, SolarCity and PayPal in addition to SpaceX, Musk is no stranger to success. But – as one might imagine with a company whose mission is to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets – he’s seen his share of challenges. Musk’s dream of sending humans to Mars, beginning with robotic mission known as Red Dragon has been pushed back two years to 2020. And while there are incomprehensibly complex technical reasons for the delay, there are also very basic hurdles. For example, with a temperature an average of -67 degrees Fahrenheit, the air is less than balmy. Musk recently lamented that once his passengers arrive on Mars: “it is a little cold," Musk concedes.
The culture at SpaceX is far more welcoming – and that’s no accident. Understandably, lots of people want to work there, but there’s a dedication to employee experience at the company that’s critical to drawing and sustaining the world’s most innovative thinkers. At SpaceX, they know that not all issues can be addressed with the perfect formula or algorithm.
Bjelde gives us an inside look at what it really takes to build trust, engagement and a great company culture:
1. What do you do to foster employee trust and engagement?
SpaceX is an environment where people are encouraged to provide and receive criticism freely – that is how we all improve. We are open about failures and educate everyone about them so we all can avoid learning the same lesson the hard way.
2. How do you help build a great company culture?
The culture at SpaceX is a reflection of our extraordinary team. What I believe makes SpaceX unique is that people here believe in the mission and are driven to make it a reality. No matter what your role is, we’re all connected to the long-term mission and every contribution counts. Whether we’re gathering to watch a launch together, celebrating big wins, or sharing the pain of a failure, it affects us all and there is a strong sense of camaraderie. This hyper-focus and alignment of incredibly talented people is a powerful force and a key element of our culture.
3. What is the best part about working here?
Being a part of our mission to become a multi-planet species. Seeing hardware you worked on launch into orbit and return is also incredible. And the frozen yogurt and many other fun perks are nice too.
4. How do you recruit talent – what are some of your best practices?
We ask our hiring managers to hire people better than themselves – if they do this then we are making the company better. We don’t weight experience as heavily as we do passion, drive and raw talent and we can’t rely on a resume to be 100% accurate – in the end you are trying to employ the person and not the piece of resume paper so super important to get off of that sheet and get to know the true candidate. The best indicator of a candidate’s ability to perform the job duties is to sample it with a practical examinations (a variety of engineering or other job related testing) coupled with team interviews and 1:1’s so we can get a rounded review of a candidate’s performance capabilities and attitude.
Top performers know what top talent looks like so we have an employee referral program which asks employees to help us find and attract other talent they know of, can vouch for, and would like to work with. Our internship program sees ~700 interns pass through each year and is another great pipeline for talent. We also rely heavily on engineering competitions like Formula SAE, Baja SAE, Design-Build-Fly, RoboSub, RoboBoat and more. These are great opportunities to find passionate candidates tackling applicable engineering challenges, demonstrating their innovative ideas and approach to problem solving, competitiveness and drive. These have been so successful at finding talent that we have since created and sponsor our own Hyperloop competition.
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Learn more about the Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards, including reading the full methodology.
