What it's like to interview with Travis Kalanick, according to the CEO himself

• Uber founder Travis Kalanick said that his early Uber interviews included a 200-card alphabetizing game.
• "When you interview, simulate what it's like working together, so that day one is already like week two," he said on TBPN.
• For Kalanick's new startup, he faced the challenge of hiring candidates while in stealth mode.

Want to work for Travis Kalanick? You'd better learn your ABCs.

The Uber founder, who left the company in 2017, recently launched his Atoms startup out of stealth more than 8 years after he resigned as Uber's CEO amid investor pressure. His new company, which wants to build a "wheelbase for robots," spent years hiring under the radar. That meant more interviews, but without the brand recognition of his former ride-hailing company.

Kalanick shared his interview tips on TBPN, including one sorting game that he had hiring candidates play back in the Uber days.

When hiring his first driver operations employee in 2010, Kalanick said he put names on 200 cards and told the candidate to alphabetize them. Then, he started the timer.

"We would give them crazy analytics tests and then be like, 'Okay, this is our guy,'" Kalanick said.

His philosophy hasn't changed. So long as the candidate wasn't using AI, Kalanick would still want the candidate who could alphabetize the cards the quickest, he said.

Sorting is a "big freaking deal" in computer science, he said. The test showed whether candidates could sort efficiently, he said — not just in software, but in the candidate's brain.

"When you interview, simulate what it's like working together, so that day one is already like week two," he said.

That's what people at Kalanick's companies do, he said: they solve problems. It's also the most important skill that Kalanick hires for.

"Whether you're young or old, executive or junior, who can solve problems is number one," Kalanick said.

Kalanick said he often ends up hiring younger talent — but he's not intentionally looking for youth, he said. He's looking for good employees with "no judgment on what it is we need to get done."

When building a team to run operations, Kalanick said: "Old people aren't the answer."

With Atoms, Kalanick also faced the unique challenge of hiring in stealth mode. The business wasn't public-facing; employees couldn't even list the company on their LinkedIn profiles. He even gave it an intentionally generic name: City Storage Systems.

Recruiters could leverage Kalanick's fame, he said, but struggled with the company's name. "So, do you guys just have these boxes sitting in parking lots?" he imagined a candidate asking.

"You build a culture of people that want to build and do not need to be famous when they do it, which basically means emotional intelligence," Kalanick said.

Being in stealth and building a "high EQ" company culture that cuts against the human desire to be publicly acknowledged for what you do means "you have to go the extra mile to recruit, the extra mile in sales," he added. Every recruiter was "outbound," he said, something that made them good at their craft.

"I believe that we have some of the best recruiters in the world because of it," he said.