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Although a company's culture is mostly an abstract concept, real, physical things such as a company's physical plant and design can play a significant role in shaping its unique culture. The way a space is designed and enhanced can influence productivity, general outlook, and a lot more. There are many companies out there that sell expensive furniture and chairs to make an office better, but really these just help business achieve standardization in terms of the look of the space, but don't give it any heart.

It's no secret that some of the so-called "coolest companies to work for" such as Google, Apple, and Yahoo have spent millions to create fun, interactive work environments. I've even seen some companies do totally insane things, like build a three story slide in their offices.

But what about small companies with smaller budgets? With our limited budget and small space, we've not gone to any extremes (yet) but we have added things that represent us and our culture. From the Nintendo Wii Room with Astroturf on the floor to the Relaxation Room that was built by employees in an unused office, all of these additions add personality and depth to the work environment. They also allow people to put their own "stamp" on their workplace. Since we spend a lot of time in our offices, that's really important.

Maybe some of these extreme workspace makeovers will give you ideas for what you can create at your own company:

• Red Bull, London. Indoor slide, conference room ping pong table, and reception desk that looks like a skateboard ramp.
• Google, Mountain View, California. Volleyball court, swimming pool, and scooters.
• Fog Creek Software, New York 200 gallon fish tank.

What are the common themes in these and many other cool office environments? Lots of glass (perhaps to evoke transparency and authenticity), no cubes or very low cubes, snacks, fridges filled with drinks, and entertainment options. If you've got a large budget, you can also have cafes, real restaurants, and maybe even a convenience store on-site for employees' needs.

What makes your office unique? What cool, interesting, and fun things have you created for your environment? What have you seen at the coolest offices? Also, are these gimmicks or actually a representation of their culture?

With so many people job hunting these days, it's harder than ever to make your resume stand out from the crowd. As co-founder at Grasshopper, I look at tons of resumes each week. While occasionally I'll find a diamond in the rough, more often than not, candidates stand out for the wrong reasons--there are typographical errors in their cover letters or resumes, or they promise a certain level of design work and then their portfolio tells a different story. I'm not a recruiter, of course, but since resumes often cross my desk (or more accurately, my computer screen), I thought I'd offer up some pointers to prospective candidates. Keep in mind the following is what makes me really consider a candidate--it's not intended to be an exhaustive, one-size-fits all list.

1. Don't make your cover letter a personal manifesto. I want to see you've taken the time to personalize your cover letter, but I don't want to read a thesis before I get to your resume. If I see you've provided a lot of words for something you should've just said in a few, I have to assume that you don't value my time (or yours). My personal limit for cover letters is about three concise paragraphs.
2. Stand out--for the right reasons. If you're a graphic designer and on your resume you claim to have tons of design experience, I expect your portfolio and website to reflect that. It's also good if your resume has a small design element that sets it apart from the rest, but nothing crazy.
3. Find out if you'll fit in. Be realistic about whether or not you'll be a good fit for the company. How do you do this? Reading about Grasshopper before you apply/get an interview is a good start. You could also read this blog, since I post about Grasshopper quite a bit. However, you'll really have an advantage in the hiring process if you check out our core ideologies and think about what they mean to you. One of the most successful interviews ever at Grasshopper was a candidate--and now employee--who took the time to learn all of the core values and then described how she exhibited each one as a prospective candidate during the interview process. She was hired.
4. Tell me about your passion. At Grasshopper, we look for people who are passionate about what they do every day at work, but also in their personal lives. If you're passionate about cycling, blogging, or you're a budding oenophile, tell me about it somewhere on your resume or cover letter (in a subtle and tasteful way, of course). I like to see that you know how to balance your passion with your work responsibilities, too, so if you get to the interview stage, be prepared to tell me how you've done this in the past.
5. Show me how you're engaged with social media. What's your social media profile? Are you on Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? If you're using social media and you think it's relevant to your position, include the info somewhere on your resume. It's another way for me to find out if you're the right fit for Grasshopper, and checking out your profiles can really provide extra details about you as a person and as a candidate. This might not be necessary for all job applicants, but it's helpful for many, especially if you're applying for a marketing role, or any other position that requires heavy interaction with people. That being said, if your Facebook or Twitter accounts showcase a plethora of unnecessary details about you (e.g., you post on Twitter: "Eating a bowl of cereal."), then you shouldn't tell me about it. Simple as that.
6. Use your personality. A little personality goes a long way in my book. People in creative fields like advertising and art direction have known this for years, and always seem to have the most innovative "cover letters", resumes, and portfolios. While submitting a resume that's over the top won't work for a software development position, take a lesson from the creatives out there and add something special to your resume to make it stand out--like a short video cover letter or an inventive resume format (that doesn't obscure your credentials). While it may not work if you're applying for a position at Deloitte, when executed properly, it'll get you noticed at Grasshopper.

Job postings can play an important role in finding candidates for specific types of jobs, however, when recruiting in highly competitive markets and for individuals with specific skill sets, it requires much more than a job posting. While I'm no recruiting expert, I've researched, experienced and learned a lot about the field over the past few years because of my involvement in GotVMail's recruiting process. As a result, I've learned a lot about what it takes to find the right candidates.

There are a lot of components to a good recruiting strategy: employment branding, authentic relationships, networking, process, among others, but for this post I am going to focus on creative sourcing techniques found "in the wild" that will put your company in front of the best off-market or "passive candidates."

Here are some examples I have seen that are really creative, ones I'll use to re-formulate our first concept, which will launch soon.

• Red 5 Studios - "Golden ticket"
  In 2007, Red 5 Studios was starting out and wanted to build an amazing team to develop online games. The company identified 100 of the best candidates with the exact skills they needed and sent them a package with a set of five nested boxes and a personalized iPod Shuffle. This generated a great response from prospective candidates, a load of media coverage, and is still referenced on their company website as generating great new candidates because of the enormous buzz it created.
• Fog Creek Software - "Get them in college"
  Joel Spolsky is well known for writing about his views on software, but an Inc. column he wrote in 2007 provides great insight into his process for finding the best college interns and paying them to work on production code and cool things in a true audition for a larger role (aka, a job with Joel after graduation). What I found particularly striking was Spolsky's description of how the company rolls out the red carpet for these interns, and makes sure the experience is amazing.

• Google - "Problem solving billboard"
  Remember how in the movie "Good Will Hunting" the MIT professor leaves a math problem on the blackboard in the hallway outside his classroom, and the janitor, played by Matt Damon, solves it in the middle of the night after washing the floors? This is a great example of a how effective a tactic like the one Google has used a number of times can be: ask for solutions to problems only people with the certain skills can solve, in a very public place. For example, in 2004, Google created a billboard that displayed a problem, and directed people to a website. Once on the website, visitors were then directed to an even harder problem. This was a clever way for Google to find people smart enough to solve such problems, and therefore, qualify them to work for Google.
• TokBox - "TokBox wants Yahoo's best"
  Yahoo announced a layoff of 1,500 people and quick-thinking TokBox, which recently raised money,decided this was an opportunity to get some of the best talent. They parked a taco truck outside of Yahoo to give out free tacos and job applications. This got some attention for sure-- maybe even the unwanted type from Yahoo security (!).

In our current economy, tons of people are looking for jobs. However, some of the best people are still employed, so you want to target that group as well. Creative recruiting becomes more important than ever if you have a staffing need that isn't being met by the traditional job posting. Here at GotVMail, we're trying to come up with a campaign that matches our culture and the type of people we want based in part on the aforementioned examples.

Have you seen a great recruiting campaign like the ones above? I'd like to know about it. Post your comments.

Part of our effort to further our "goals culture" was to put in place a performance review process that was valuable to both the individual team member as well as the team. I spent a lot of time reviewing performance management systems--all of which focused on reviews--looking at everything from huge companies to tiny start-ups. During this process I discovered that the human resource software market is a very odd one, and one that is mired in old-fashioned ideas and process. In short, many companies acquired products in an effort to provide an all-in-one solution, but the end result was the creation of many companies doing many things, but not doing any of them well.

After sitting through many demos, webinars, tours, I found SuccessFactors. At that point in time, I was impressed with their focus on performance reviews. Unfortunately, they have since gone down the "we do everything" path, which is too bad. Analysts' reports placed them as the leader in this narrow space and provided some great insight into what made them stand out, from the goals library and writing assistant to easy to use routing of forms. We ultimately decided that SuccessFactors would be the best choice for implementing a comprehensive performance review system.

We set out to create a quarterly performance review cycle that would closely align with our company, department and personal goals, while providing valuable and timely feedback to all team members. Of course, there is overhead in setting goals quarterly, between measuring them and providing feedback around goals and core values, but we feel this investment in our people is well worth it.

It's still a learning process for everyone and each quarter we will get better and continue to see the results. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and the interface is very difficult to use at times, but keeping personal or team member notes isn't efficient, either, and goals were not designed to be completed quarterly. Despite this, we push past these obstacles to make the process the best it can be.

At GotVMail, we make an effort to provide free, healthy snacks (that taste good) for our employees in addition to providing a wide array of beverages. Having better choices on hand makes it harder to pig out on bad stuff. We've had dried fruit in the past, but nothing beats the real thing. There's no other time of year when this is more evident than around the holidays, when we receive tons of fruit baskets. We always put these in our GotVMail kitchen, and the fruit is gone within minutes. Since it's clear our people like fresh fruit, last year I started to look for a good way to provide this year round.

There aren't a lot of options for fresh fruit delivery, and here's why:

• Fruit basket companies: Either include lots of non-fruit items or offer very expensive "branded" fruit (for example, Harry & David offers their special fruit that somehow needs to be vastly more expensive than the same kind sold in the supermarket)
• Supermarket delivery: Lacks selection and quality
• Famers' market: Requires time we don't have, and selection isn't consistently varied

While reviewing the options, I finally found a company that specializes in fresh fruit delivery for offices, The FruitGuys. Every Tuesday each of our offices (Boston and Austin) get a delivery of fresh in season fruit. It's a no-frills deal--just fruit, straight up. This has become so popular that by Thursday on most weeks everything is gone or sitting on someone's desk in the final ripening stages. Besides having a lot of nutritional value, having the extra fruit around means our people can supplement their lunches (along with our $5 lunch subsidy) or have an extra snack. Anyway you slice it, it's a good idea.

I recently found California Fruit Company who seems to be offering a similar service but limited delivery area.

One of our goals at GotVMail was to create a world class work culture. In order to achieve that goal, we need to create an outstanding employment brand. What's an "employment brand"? Similar to any other brand name, an "employment brand" are the recognizable attributes a company projects to prospective and current employees. It's essentially what people think about your approach to finding the right talent, and how you treat that talent once they're a part of your company.

There are two very important imperatives to GotVMail's employment brand: treat every employee and prospective employee better than you would treat your best customer, and make things radically easy for your applicant, from the interview process to benefits. Important to note: "easy" doesn't mean "easy interviews." It means creating a situation where expectations about the position are clear from the outset, and that part of doing well in that job doesn't consist of guessing what your personal objectives are as an employee. For this post, I'm going to talk exclusively about the impact of treating every who enters your office with respect.

We may be a growing start-up, but whenever a prospective employee enters our Boston office, they're greeted and made to feel at home right away. Candidates shouldn't feel like they're interrupting the flow of business or putting anyone out by arriving for an interview. I'd never thought about how powerful a personal greeting could be to a prospective employee until I received a thank you note from a candidate who explained its impact: he felt valued and welcomed from the moment he stepped in because he received such a warm welcome from our staff. It affirmed my belief that it was very important for every candidate to be greeted and given a personal tour of our headquarters when they arrive for an interview.

A workplace shouldn't be an alienating environment, regardless of whether you're a current or prospective employee. Employees should feel as valued and worthy of attention as the vendors you do business with each day. This is a crucial tenet of our employment brand; we want people to know we want them!

"Pay for performance" has been around for a while, but the results of implementing it in companies have been varied. It's an easy concept to understand --pay people when they produce results!--but it's not as easy to implement.

Performance reviews weren't a priority when launching GotVMail, and still weren't while fueling our amazing growth. However, at the start of this year, it was clear performance reviews were ineffective: the process was confusing to managers, resulting in delays or missed reviews, and they provided little value to employees. Rather than put a system like this in place, which took old fashioned paper-based processes and digitized them, we wanted to efficiently link pay with individual goals and company alignment.

"Pay for performance" is a concept that's so straight-forward that it's easy to just dump it into a business. However, this hands-off factor contributes to its failure rate and lack of long term viability. Rather than throw this system into the performance structure at GotVMail, we defined a framework that would take a number of quarters to fully implement. It will need refinement, but ultimately it will provide valuable as well as timely feedback to employees, while rewarding behavior and actions closer to the time they occur with quarterly bonus pay. Here's the plan:

• Company Alignment: Every company, large or small--and especially the truly entrepreneurial ones--needs to be driving in the same direction at every level of the company. This means making sure people are aligned around common goals, all the time--not just when it's convenient. It also needs to happen at all levels, from the most junior person to the executive team.
• Goals Culture: Once aligned, people need to be driving on a daily basis towards SMART goals, which are cascaded from each department and then, ultimately, unifed within the scheme of company goals. Understanding the difference between 'tasks' and 'goals' and boosting the ability to think in this way is critical.
• Coaching and Career Development: While the company works towards clear goals together, people need to establish a vested interest in the process by integrating their personal goals with their goals as an employee. Career development is the missing link that provides personal direction and commitment to the goals of your organization.

With this framework in mind, a true "pay for performance" culture is theoretically attainable--and sustainable. Here at GotVMail, we're eager to apply this theory, and see the results. We've completed our first full quarter cycle of reviews, learned a lot about ratings scale alignment as well as setting goals or "goal-setting." The end of the 4th quarter represents our second full cycle, and it's the first time we'll have a quarterly performance opportunity incentive (bonus) tied to the results. Check back here as my company goes through this process, learns the ins and outs (as well as experiences the major mistakes), and implements a truly productive "pay for performance" structure.

(Note: I recently heard a speaker talking about performance reviews and he suggested using the name "progress reviews" to be more positive, and I am considering making this shift. For the time-being, however, I'm sticking to the term "performance reviews")