Amazon has forever changed the way people shop online, but it wasn’t always the juggernaut that it is today. In fact, once upon a time it was just a tiny startup with a big vision. So, how did it end up as the giant online retailer that it is now?

It’s hard to say, but one thing founder Jeff Bezos was very intentional about was how he hired for the company. In fact, in his 1998 letter to shareholders, just four years after Amazon was founded, Bezos wrote, “It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people… Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success.”

Since then, Bezos has charged his hiring mangers to hire based on three critical measures. And if you were to ask him, it’s these questions that have made all the difference.

1. Will you admire this person?

Bezos’ first benchmark was about admiration. He wanted hiring managers to admire the people they were bringing on to their teams, not just the other way around. Bezos extrapolated that admiration meant that this was a person who could be an example to other and who others could learn from. From this criterion alone, the standard for hiring is kept sky high.

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