Job seekers may think that an Ivy League degree or wealth 500 work experience will get them a job, but the person they thank during the interview may be more important than their education.
Steven Bartlett Founder and Host Diary of a CEO It’s for this reason that the podcast gives an applicant with an almost blank resume a chance.
“I hired someone with a two-line resume. They had zero experience,” Bartlett explained in a recent LinkedIn post. “Much of the reason I gave her the job: She thanked the security guard by name on the way into the building.”
She also continued to prove herself in seemingly small ways during the hiring process — these acts of humility got her the job, not her qualifications.
“When she doesn’t know something, she says in interviews ‘I don’t know yet, but here’s how I figure it out,'” Bartlett explained. “After the interview, she taught herself the answers she didn’t know and emailed them to me within a few hours.”
The founders took a chance on the inexperienced candidate, and it didn’t take long for it to pay off. Bartlett said that within six months, she had proven herself to be one of the best employees he had ever hired. “Fifteen years of recruiting experience has taught me that cultural fit and personality are harder to recruit than experience, skills, or education.”
Bartlett’s recruiting philosophy is music to the ears of entry-level Gen Zers who don’t have a full-time job on their resume.
A CEO with his own unique recruiting philosophy
The long-standing rule of thumb is that the candidate with the best degree, the most work experience, and impressive qualifications will win the job interview. But with years of hiring successes and failures, bosses are breaking out of the status quo and chasing talent with people skills, work ethics and integrity.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon doesn’t like candidates with the highest IQs. Instead, he said he’s in the “smart enough camp” when it comes to recruiting talent at the $282 billion company. He doesn’t focus on educational background, preferring applicants with a “human factor,” including communication skills, adaptability and determination. Solomon noted that experience is also “significantly undervalued” and is “a big differentiator for companies.” Getting into Harvard or being the smartest person in the room may be impressive, but it won’t get candidates very far among the banking giants.
“You have to be smart, but the smartest people in the world don’t need a whole bunch of other stuff [is] Failure to navigate Goldman Sachs well will not lead to success at Goldman Sachs in the long run. ” Solomon revealed on Sequoia Capital’s show. long strange journey Last year’s podcast. “You can’t teach experience.”
Danny Meyer, founder of global fast-casual chain Shake Shack, couldn’t agree more. To run the company’s 510 restaurants like a well-oiled machine, he needs people with a high “hospitality quotient” (HQ), not IQ. He’s looking for six green hallmarks in Shake Shack talent: integrity, optimism, intellectual curiosity, work ethic, empathy and self-awareness.
“I really don’t care what your IQ is,” Meyer told wealthJason Del Rey at the Qualtrics X4 Summit last year. “IQ basically represents a person’s ability to learn. The so-called high IQ refers to the degree to which a person feels happier when he provides happiness to others.”
Even Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha and longtime CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has tweaked his hiring philosophy. In his more than 50 years at the helm of the $1 trillion holding company, Buffett has seen professionals without Ivy League degrees succeed. When planning his CEO succession last year, the investment mogul made one thing clear: He wouldn’t check the educational background of candidates’ resumes.
“I never look at where a candidate went to school. Never!” Buffett wrote in a 2025 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. “Of course, there are some great administrators who attended the most prestigious schools. But there are also a lot of people, like Pete, who might have benefited from attending less prestigious institutions and didn’t even bother to finish.”
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com