Steve Jobs was not an easy boss and placed high demands on his employees at Apple. He declared the selection of applicants to be a matter for the boss because one quality was particularly important to him.
Companies need new employees if they want to grow. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was also aware of this. For this reason, Jobs himself took part in job interviews.
Jobs tested applicants in an idiosyncratic way. He criticized their previous work and observed the reaction to it. This allowed him to see whether someone was up to the high standards at Apple.
Boss ruined his company in 59 seconds on Twitch – what happened to him?
More videos
Autoplay
Steve Jobs teased applicants to test them
What did Steve Jobs do? In the book “In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World,” the former Apple boss shared how important his own participation in interviews for new employees was to him.
Jobs declared recruiting to be a top priority. The visionary, who died in 2011, said:
I dedicate one day a week to assisting with hiring. This is one of the most important tasks you can do.
Steve Jobs in the book “In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World”
In a conversation with an applicant, Jobs criticized his previous work. To do this, he found out about his old job in advance. He called it a disaster to the potential new employee and asked, “Why did you work on it?”
Why did he do that? He annoyed potential employees with this criticism because he wanted to know how they would react to it. Applicants either defended their previous work or gave in and agreed to jobs.
In this way he checked whether his counterpart had certain characteristics. He was looking for new talents with a firm will and a strong personality.
Compared to Jobs, his successor Tim Cook is convinced of the abilities of his employees and prefers to concentrate on his own tasks.
Why was this important to him? Steve Jobs was considered a difficult boss and didn’t want to have yes-men on his team at Apple. He occasionally needed headwinds in his decisions. Therefore, Jobs only wanted to hire people who passed his interview test.
In the early days of Apple, Steve Jobs and his co-founder Steve Wozniak hired many new talented employees. The third founding member had already left the company at this point and was no longer involved in this process.
Since Apple was growing quickly and had to react accordingly to changes in the company, they needed employees who were up to the task.
Steve Jobs was very particular when it came to hiring new employees. But he also showed similar behavior when it came to firing people. An employee had to leave several times, but she didn’t hold it against the late Apple CEO: The employee was fired 5 times by Steve Jobs and she thanks him for this experience