CEO who raised the minimum wage at his company to $70,000 a year reveals the most important quality he looks for when hiring

Dan Price at GeekWires Startup Day event.

(Geekwire) Gravity Payments received 3,500 job applications within one week of Dan Price's minimum wage announcement.

When Dan Price, CEO of the credit card payment processing firm Gravity Payments, announced his company's new minimum wage of $70,000 last month, he received a cacophony of praise, skepticism, criticism, and wonderment.

He also received several thousand job applications: 3,500 within one week.

The good news for these prospective employees is that Gravity is actively hiring.

The bad news is that they are only hiring a single-digit number of people, Price tells Business Insider.

We asked the CEO about his hiring process and what will make a candidate stand out from the competition.

If you want to join Price's team and start with a salary of at least $70,000, you need to have integrity.

"Integrity is far and away the most important thing," says Price. "We're looking for somebody that is very honest and trustworthy."

Then, he says, they look for somebody that is willing to sacrifice and serve. "Somebody that sees work as a cause — as a way to change the world and dedicate themselves to social change — rather than seeing it as just a way to get a paycheck."

To determine whether or not a candidates character aligns with Gravity's values and vision, Price has a go-to interview question: Tell me about a situation where you didn't live up to your own standards?

"How transparent somebody will be in responding to that question tells you a lot about their honesty," Price explains. "It’s a really tough question. I like to test them and see if they will actually give you the full story — which you can tell if they do — or if they will try to sugar coat it."

Getting by that question is only the beginning. "I like to do about 20 follow up questions to make sure I understand the who, what, where, when, and why within every question," Price tells us. "I go way deeper to make sure I can see the whole world from that person's shoes."

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