Many CEOs know what kinds of employees they want at their company, and can point out the top character trait they seek in job candidates.
For Wisp CEO Monica Cepak, that trait is the ability to collaborate with your colleagues, especially when there’s a problem to be solved. To find out if a job candidate has the soft skill, she asks a particular interview question: What’s the hardest problem you’ve ever solved at work, and how did you reach a solution?
If an interviewee’s answer is “cross-functional in nature” — showing how they worked with other team members to solve an issue — they’re probably a team player who regularly seeks insights from their coworkers, Cepak told CNBC Make It on April 24.
An answer like, “‘Oh, I did everything myself. Myself, myself, myself'” is a telltale sign that a person “can’t work well in an environment like ours because nobody can solve every problem [on their own.] We’re a team at the end of the day, and your ability to problem solve by working with others is key,” said Cepak, who has nearly 10 years of experience in executive-level roles.
Cepak isn’t the only company leader who seeks out specific traits in employees. Here are two more examples of CEOs’ biggest employee green flags:
Balancing ambition with focus
Zig Serafin, the CEO of experience management company Qualtrics, appreciates an employee who can contribute big ideas without losing sight of their day-to-day job duties.
Highly successful people know how to balance “having your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground,” Serafin told CNBC Make It on April 14. People who constantly pitch new projects without seeing them through, don’t show any ambition at all or can’t multitask “won’t be around very long,” he added. “Good luck.”
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During interviews, hiring managers can gauge this trait by asking behavioral questions like “Tell me about a time when you had to juggle a long-term goal with an immediate task. How did you prioritize your time?” or “Describe a situation where you had to change your routine to better align with company goals. Was it hard adapting to your new normal?”
You can effectively answer behavioral questions with the STAR (Situation, Task, Action and Result) method, according to Harvard career advisor Gorick Ng: Briefly describe the situation or problem, explain the task you had to complete, describe the actions you took to reach a solution and explain the outcome of your efforts.
Showing intellectual curiosity
Michael Ramlet, CEO of global data intelligence firm Morning Consult, looks for intellectual curiosity in his employees and job candidates, particularly against the backdrop of the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry.
As people and businesses increasingly rely on AI, employees who voraciously search for answers to questions and actively find solutions to problems will become more essential than they already are, Ramlet told CNBC Make It on April 1.
“You think about [generative AI] chat prompts and … [humans] still have to ask the question,” Ramlet said. “So that intellectual curiosity is, I think, going to be a distinguishing trait, not just for those of us at Morning Consult, but across the board.”
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