A friend of mine is a senior executive with  Telstra.  Here is his response to the question, What are three main things that you look for when you hire?

Probably the most important one would be engagement. I would really be looking for somebody who is seeking to engage with the business, to engage with me as their boss and to be willing to put in and deliver. You can say a lot about skills and hard work, but it’s that mix of the two you get from somebody that will really be the key to find out how successfully they mix with your team.

I suppose another one would be a sense of their track record; not just their track record on paper, but how proud they are of it. Do they have a sense of self-worth, driven out of their track record? Somewhere in between engagement and self-worth would be initiative. Initiative is part of engagement and it really drives your track record. I’m not a micro manager. I don’t believe I need to tell people how to do every single aspect of their job. If somebody comes back to me with output for a certain objective that I’ve asked to be met, so long as they have correctly reached the outcomes that we needed and have achieved benefit for the shareholder, the business, the team, me and themselves, then that’s what you want to have. My style relies on initiative. It relies on people being self-starting. I do tend to trust people. So I will tend to devolve authority to my team.

Well those are the words from someone who hires a lot of people and is doing it for a household name

See you next post.

All my best,

James

James Evangelidis

If you like this article please retweet, post it on Facebook or LinkedIn, Stumble it and /or email it so it can help others. I'd also love to know YOUR take. Please feel free to comment below.

Tagged as: initiative, Telstra, trust