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Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times

This interview with Don Charlton, founder and C.E.O. of Jazz, a recruiting software firm, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were some early influences for you?

A. I grew up in a small town south of Pittsburgh. Very humble beginnings. My mom and my sister and I were really poor — we had a kitchen table with only three legs, and we pushed it in a corner to keep it upright.

I remember a moment, plain as day, when I was 10 years old. I had 15 cents, and I was looking for a dime. I was hungry, and I wanted a Little Debbie snack cake for 25 cents. I looked in my mom’s purse. I looked under the refrigerator. I couldn’t find a dime. That was the moment when I realized that I had to take control of my life. I really feel like the foundation of what made me an entrepreneur started right there.

What about as a teenager?

Through junior high and high school, I was a good student, but I was a great artist. I was going to be a cartoonist. I had a great guidance counselor who helped me understand that there was this field called graphic design. He told me about the Rochester Institute of Technology. So at 18, I went off to college. I had $75 and my bus ticket.

I had to pay about $6,000 every year out of my own pocket in college. So I did food service and worked as a janitor outside of class. I was used to working a lot of hours from all my jobs during high school. Being in an environment where I could put on my music and mop the floor was a luxury for me.

And after college?

I got a job at a communications design firm. The founders were my first mentors. I came into the business world well aware of the fact that people might treat me differently because I’m black. But my bosses didn’t. They would have me facilitate meetings with clients early on in my career. It helped build up this reservoir of confidence.

You started your company seven years ago. What’s unusual about the culture?

One thing is the culture of candor. After we have a big meeting with all of our employees, I might say, “Hey, you know that conversation that you’re going to have over lunch or at the bar where you might say, ‘Why don’t we do such and such?’ Well, that’s the question you should ask right now.”

Or I might be more blunt and say, “If you don’t tell me about the problem, if you don’t ask me the question, how can I help you?” That level of directness has bled into our company, and I think there’s a lot more trust because people speak their minds.

What else?

One of the things we talk about is “embrace unfairness.” We have big competitors, and we embrace them as competitors. If a competitor takes a customer from us, that’s part of business. You don’t want people to feel defeatist at all, so it’s about our muscle, our drive and our determination to land-grab as much as possible. It’s a big frontier, and we’re trying to get our piece of it.

What have you learned about leadership as your company has grown?

It’s a stressful job, so what I wear on my face when I walk in the door infects everybody. So you learn to be more inwardly focused. You can’t emote as much. You also learn that the most important thing that people should get out of their interactions with you is empowerment and direction.

How do you hire?

One thing I’m trying to find out in an interview is whether the person is self-aware. Think about somebody who’s applying for a job. It’s actually a very arrogant thing to do. You are saying to the employer, in effect, that if they have one other candidate or 1,000 other candidates, you are the No. 1 person.

So you want the candidate to recognize the aspects of themselves where they can be confident and the parts they’re going to need for them to be successful in a new company. If they gloss over the challenges of coming on board, then I worry that they haven’t spent enough time thinking about the transition.

I also want to know their decision framework for where they want to go. What things in your work or personal life have led you to believe that now is the right time for a career shift? Because if you’re just angry at your current boss, that’s not a good reason. But if you’ve thought long and hard about what you want out of life and what you want to contribute, that’s better.

What are your best questions for understanding someone’s self-awareness?

If you failed at this job in your first 90 days, what things wouldn’t you be doing well? And what don’t you know, but know you need to know, in order to be successful at this job? People have a tough time answering that.

What career advice do you give to young people?

You need to understand the world, and what different jobs entail. Curiosity is the most important human trait. How much do you know about the world of work that you’re not in yet? How did people get into their jobs, and what do they do?

The more you know about those journeys, the more people you talk to — just asking a simple question like “How did you end up getting into this career?” — the more you’ll start to recognize when the ground under your feet is moving you in a particular direction. And you’ll be much more empowered to set yourself up for that career.

There are a lot of 18-year-olds who have no clue what they want to do, and they don’t have a good framework for how the world works. So that’s what I would say — think about yourself as an adult now so you don’t end up lost in the future.