Tim Cook said Apple looks for four qualities in new employees
Find a job at Apple not easy—but according to CEO Tim Cook, people who possess four specific qualities are more likely to find themselves in the running.
Speaking at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy in 2022—where he received an honorary degree in innovation and international management—Cook told students that it is important for incoming employees to care about the world around them.
“We have a group of people in the company who really want to change the world, want to enrich people’s lives, want to leave the world better than they found it,” he said. “It’s a feeling that motivates people to do their best and I’ve seen it happen many times and the results are unbelievable.”
He then delved into the specific traits Apple looks for in new employees, revealing that the tech giant values four traits in particular.
Cooperation
Cook told an audience in Naples at the October 2022 event that an important skill anyone who wants to work at Apple needs to have is the ability to collaborate with colleagues.
“We believe that strong individual contributors really do matter, but two strong individuals working together can do great work and small teams can do great things,” he said. amazing”.
“So we look for the ability to collaborate with people—the basic feeling is that if I share my idea with you, it will grow, bigger and better.”
Reiterating that different perspectives help ideas flourish, Cook noted that collaborative processes are responsible for Apple’s ability to create new products.
“It’s not someone going into a corner or a closet and learning something about themselves, it’s a collaborative effort,” he said.
Creative
Creativity is another trait Apple looks for in future employees, Cook added.
“We look for people who think differently, who can look at a problem and not get caught up in the dogma of how it has always been viewed,” he told the students. “And so [we look for] Someone who will look at the problem and look at it from different angles and use their creativity to come up with a solution.”
Curious
“It’s a cliché, but there are no stupid questions,” Cook said, adding that Apple values curiosity and looks for people who are naturally curious.
“Curiosity is being curious about something to ask a lot of questions, whether you think they are smart questions or dumb questions,” he said. “It’s amazing when someone starts asking questions like a child, it puts pressure on that person to think deeply about the answer. So we look for that innate curiosity in humans.”
expertise
Finally, Cook noted that Apple wants people with the right expertise to join its workforce.
“If we’re doing something in industrial design, we need someone who knows industrial design and has skills in that from their college or career,” he said. do.
Cook suggests that people with these four characteristics will be successful at Apple and therefore the company will continue to hire people who can bring these characteristics to the table.
“That’s what we look for in people and it’s been a very good formula for us,” he said.
However, he notes that doing a good job is a two-way street, and doing a job that makes you unhappy is not a recipe for success.
“People have to work for a cause bigger than themselves,” he said. “So you want a vision for a company that is about serving customers and somehow improving their lives. You want to do it ethically.”
Without those ingredients, he argues, no amount of money can make a job worth doing.
“There’s no gravity from there — the gravity is always, What are you doing for other people?” he said. “And with a purpose like that, it’s amazing what people will do from a work standpoint.”
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on October 3, 2022.
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