Talent vs. Education

What is the best fit for the task at hand?

There exists a norm these days about the ideology on what qualifies a good leader. They say that the best leaders are those that spend over half a decade in school learning about their desired career field. These are individuals who have studied for exams extensively and have put aside their interests and hobbies to remain fervent in their education. Though they may have wanted to be with their friends and family, they ultimately made the choice to prevail towards their Master’s in Business Administration.

Then after that, they began an internship in their intended field and learned about the company’s organization. They learned about what the rules were and what their job description entailed on a daily basis. After about a year, they started a full-time job in an administrative role, and worked above others who weren’t as educated if even applicable. So now the MBA is taking pride in themselves, having realized that they hold a title that many others don’t.

They added “MBA” to the end of their signature whenever they send an email, almost as if they want the world to know. All the same, they get upset when they have work, and place most of their tasks in the hands of the people under them. Sometimes the work is grueling and time-consuming, and they ask the MBA for a break or some form of relief. The MBA doesn’t appeal to their needs, shows no appreciation, and instead quarrels with them and demeans them.

The MBA is not the leader they should be, and instead they have created malignant toxicity in the workplace. They have become the terror in town, and no one wants to work with them or even be within their presence. So, then the real question is, who is a real leader?

I watched another video featuring Elon Musk, and how his hiring process is completely different from that of other companies. Musk entailed that he is always seeking employees, and that he has even stricter criteria for who best fits the bill for the role he needs filled. As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, you’d probably imagine that even his janitors have college degrees. But this actually is far from the case, and instead, his employees are of much different backgrounds then we may have thought.

Musk carefully explained that he employs talent, and personality, as they are the most important characteristics that an employee could display on the job. He doesn’t want someone like the MBA mentioned above, who has almost abandoned their humanity for others. Instead, Elon seeks the team player with a positive attitude and demeanor.

Elon sees his role as an employer not as that of a conqueror, but instead as an inspirer. He explicitly stated that modern education means nothing to him, and that instead, a person should be judged based on their career achievements and what they seek to accomplish in their future. A candidate for Elon isn’t someone he wants to simply place into a role to do a job and be forgotten about. Instead, a candidate for Elon is someone he wants to join the endeavor and help him lead the company into a brighter future.

So here’s the real question: how does he find the right candidate?

In the video, Elon conducts an interview that is of course, far different from that of other employers. The traditional employer asks various questions, such as, “tell me about a time where you dealt with a challenge that you were unfamiliar with and how you overcame your struggle.” They may also ask something on the lines of, “Tell me about some of the projects that you have completed in your prior lines of experience.” But Elon does not care for such meager questions and takes things to a more personal level.

He conducts a test of his candidates instead and wants a light bulb to appear over their head instantly at any question asked. He asks things such as, “Tell me about your career history, and your achievements throughout your life.” From there, he looks for how quickly his candidate responds, and how quickly the ideas come to their head. The minute that they studder on their sentences, he pulls the plug on them, and moves on to the next.

So why do this? I mean, everyone has a studder after all. I can tell you as someone that just recently started a new job that my interview was not perfect, and that I also have a studder than becomes apparent regardless of the situation I am in. Well to Elon, the studder determines the authenticity of the candidate.

To him, anyone that studders amidst their response to the question asked is a red flag, because it means that they are hiding something. He remembers exactly what they say, and then will bring up another question later to make them contradict themselves. When he catches them in a lie, he knows they are not the fit.

And this technique is absolutely optimal for his future employees, as he wants quality out of them all. If you think about it though, it makes perfect sense overall. It goes without saying that for specific employer questions, we may studder over them because there is such a limited inventory of responses in our mind. We don’t know what the different departments have done in our work because we haven’t worked in them. So, we have to pick out specific answers from the experience we withhold from our own departments.

But with Elon’s very broad question about the individual’s history, there are endless answers that we can reveal to him. We can talk about our inspiration to enter our former place of employment, some of our challenges, our successes, and even more. There is so much that we can talk about, and Elon knows that the most successful and viable candidates won’t struggle over his important questions.

He knows at that particular instance how original the candidates are and knows if they are a good fit for his company. He doesn’t need someone that has a doctorate degree, and years of experience at their belt. He needs someone that is a leader, carries a good demeanor, and someone that will fervently grow not as just an employee, but also as an asset to the organization.

Let me just reiterate, that Elon won’t hire that MBA I mentioned at the beginning of this story. He doesn’t want someone who has let the title poison them and abuse their powers in the workplace. I would go as far as to say, that he would much rather employ someone with just a high school diploma but with a pure background and ten times the overall talent.

He knows that the diploma holder will promote authenticity in the workplace, get along with others and align with their goals, and grow with not only other employees, but Elon himself. They are all a family to him in a sense, and he wants the best for them, but only if they are the best at heart.

Personality and talent prevail for all applicants of Elon’s companies because they branch the most important traits out of a company. Forget about the financial goals, setting of trends, and rigidity of the average employer. The employees of the workplace are the heart and soul of an organization. If you don’t hire the purest and most authentic employees, you won’t see the growth you seek.

Talent means so much more than a simple title that you’ve obtained. A title shows what you’ve achieved unlike others, but talent and authenticity show what you’ve achieved with others.