Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Don Charlton, founder and C.E.O. of Jazz, a recruiting software firm. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

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What were some early influences for you?

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.

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To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.