Hiring Lessons From Elon Musk, Bill Gates And Other CEOs

The right kind of employees can make or break a company - and nobody knows this better than CEOs. It is the job of a company's CEO to evaluate good performers, to recognise and reward their talents. What sets a good CEO apart from the rest is as much their knack for recognising talent as it is their ability to do their job well. Today, the world's biggest companies are led by some of the most well known names in business, who have spoken about the importance of hiring the right kind of people. Here are some hiring and leadership lessons from some of the world's top CEOs:

Elon Musk's Tesla is today recognised as the world's most valuable automobile company. Tesla's meteoric rise briefly made its CEO the richest person on earth - Mr Musk surpassed Amazon's Jeff Bezos to claim the top spot for a few weeks, until Mr Bezos regained the crown.

The 49-year-old once opened up about the worst hiring mistakes he has made in the past. "One of the worst hiring mistakes that I've made in the past is looking too much at their intellectual capability alone and not on how they affect those around them," he said. 

"One of the worst hiring mistakes that I've made in the past is looking too much at their intellectual capability alone & not on how they affect those around them ... And it really matters if they have a good heart and personality" — @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/i52mL05VDl

— Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) February 10, 2021

Steve Jobs once opened up about the stage Apple went through when it hired "professional management" - but things did not work out quite like the way the tech company had wanted.

Great Steve Jobs quote: "We went out and hired a bunch of professional management. It didn't work at all. Most of them were bozos." pic.twitter.com/saaXrVSFDh

— Paulo Sa Elias (@paulosaelias) March 28, 2018

Another major throwback on hiring lessons came from Bill Gates - the co-founder of Microsoft who explained his hiring process in a video from 1989. In the clip, a 33-year-old also Mr Gates explained why he moved Microsoft to the Seattle area.

Watch 33-year old Bill Gates explain his hiring process and why he moved Microsoft to the Seattle area. https://t.co/TyZWNslMyF via @CNBCMakeIt pic.twitter.com/u1OPUU77qa

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 11, 2019

For billionaire Warren Buffet, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the most important thing to look for while hiring people is integrity. "Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy," he said. 

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