Starting out as an entrepreneur, I once tried to hire an engineer who was so engrossed in the brain-teasers we had given him that he never noticed my nose had begun gushing blood in the middle of our interview (I had actually walked into a wall while gesturing wildly to my partner and mouthing “Let’s hire this freaking guy!!!”).

But since then, I’ve come to learn that there is something far, far worse than people who aren’t Math Olympians. There are people who don’t do the right thing, or care about others. No matter how hard somebody works, if his values are messed up, he’s useless to us. In fact, worse than useless: he screws up the whole company’s reputation.

So Redfin is taking a more balanced approach to the talent-at-any-cost mentality that drives most startups, by emphasizing values too. Starting today, Terrell Owens couldn’t get a job here. This isn’t an easy change for me; I still spend four days every fall rifling through the Stanford computer science resume book looking for the 25 highest GPAs so I can beg them to work for us (Rebecca Illowsky, you made the wrong choice!). But what I like about values-based hiring is this: anyone can have the right values. It’s just that many don’t.

The choice is yours.

Lots of people work for just a paycheck, doing only what is expected of them, with none of the gumption to understand what’s really going on and to make things better. They view any form of idealism with suspicion or embarrassment, and they try so hard to be official and corporate that they can’t have a good time. Many call themselves professionals, but never profess to put their clients’ — or anyone’s — interests ahead of their own.

We want to avoid hiring those people. Which will be tricky, as Redfin has begun to grow very quickly, hiring agents in every market we serve.

So a few weeks ago, Redfin pulled together folks from across the company — agents, field agents, engineers, executives, product managers, even customers — to talk about what we valued in one another. And then we talked about how we’d act if that’s what we really valued. Here’s what we came up with:

Julie Brown and Ann Rhoades, who built the customer-service organizations at Southwest and JetBlue, flew out from New Mexico to help us get through our spats and funks.

The fur really flew. We put in stuff like caring and balanced that would never have occurred to an Ahab like me, even though I could have cried hearing colleagues say how far from those values we had sometimes strayed. We stuck with idealistic terms like mission-driven despite some concerns that it was kind of a wussy value for a company that needs to turn a profit (giving people something to believe in is the only sustainable way to turn a profit).

We ditched scrappy at the last second because it reminded people of either a cartoon dog or a drunken runt who starts a fight.

And we tried to avoid the usual corporate baloney, though anything that just hangs on the wall sooner or later starts to smell that way. The only way to keep it fresh is to call out the values every day, guiding how we hire, pay and promote folks within Redfin, how we build our website and serve our customers.

Hopefully, you’ll keep us honest. If a website feature isn’t beautiful, if it isn’t does make you smile, if we aren’t completely transparent with data, call us on it. If we don’t put the customer first, and rally to get the job all the way done, scream it from the rooftops (or maybe just send us an email). The reason we published our values is so we can be accountable for upholding them. That, and to hear what you think of ‘em too… have at it!

Thanks to all the customers and employees who helped us work this out. And thanks to Janelle Saylor for suggesting this Liberace photo to personify our headline values of Wow and Fire (or was it Genuine)?

The main argument is that real estate folks chase after new marketing channels like YouTube, Twitter or Facebook before developing credibility on the issue customers care most about: how they’ve served customers. It has only been up for an hour but is already attracting plenty of comment.

Not much time for Mark Reitman, Chicago market manager and customer-service manimal, to make headway. But now we’re looking to complete at least eight Chicago transactions in November, which for Redfin, in a new market, in a down economy, during the low season — is a lot. Check out what a client said about Mark today in Redfin’s Forums:

Before I first contacted Redfin I thought that, since the commissions were lower, I could expect to receive a lower level of service.

Boy was I wrong about that.  We closed on our house this month, and nothing could be further from the truth.  I actually got better service and everyone on your Chicago team worked very hard, and responded 7 days a week.  Plus, thanks to your awesome website, we were able to select and tour homes we were actually interested in, and saved a lot of time that used to be wasted driving around in the back of someone else’s car to see a lot of homes we didn’t want.  Then, after providing all of those benefits to us, you also gave us most of your hard earned commission.  Incredible!

I am amazed that you are able to provide such a high level of service at such a low commission.  Redfin appears to be single handedly transforming the badly outdated model that residential real estate has been following forever.  What is your secret?

Way to go Mark, way to go Redfin! And thanks to the customer who posted this message. These things whang off the walls at Redfin, and make everyone try a little harder.

(Bonus link: a remarkable essay on why bailout money should go to community banks…)

UPDATE: many thanks to Greg Whelan and Patrick Lusk for being the folks who as much as anyone really made this deal happen, and to Mark for being so generous in sharing the credit.