The winning ingredient
Do you have what it takes to land a career that can make you a millionaire before you retire? Sure, you can perfect your resume, dress to impress, and nail the trickiest interview questions. But odds are, you’re probably forgetting one rather underrated quality – and for the late Steve Jobs, it mattered much, much more than a polished CV.
In a rarely seen interview, a then-young Jobs revealed that when he was first hiring professional managers for Apple, he quickly learned that “most of them were bozos.” “They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to do anything,” he added.
So, from there on out, Jobs began to value a different trait in job candidates. “We wanted people who were insanely great at what they did, but were not necessarily those seasoned professionals,” he said. “But who had at the tips of their fingers and in their passion the latest understanding of where technology was and what they could do with that technology.”
If you find this surprising, Steve Jobs’ last words aren’t what you’d expect.
Think Passion
In other words, forget job experience; Jobs wanted passionate people on his team, instead. Why, you ask? Not only can enthusiastic employees manage themselves, but they also understand the company’s mission – and strive for that common goal with earnest.
To find employees with this type of passion, the Apple team interviewed each job candidate by presenting a Macintosh prototype and noting his or her reaction. “We wanted their eyes to light up and to get really excited,” Andy Hertzfeld, one of Apple’s first software engineers, said. “Then we knew they were one of us.”
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Source: RD.com
