Steve Jobs could be pretty forthright, even abrasive, in interviews with prospective new employees. Tim Cook, on the other hand? It’s all about the power of silence.
In a new interview to promote her book Radical Candor: Be A Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, former Apple and Google employee Kim Scott reveals what it’s like to interview with Apple’s CEO — and how she was saved from talking herself out of a job.
“Tim Cook is what I call a quiet listener,” Scott said. “When I interviewed at Apple, somebody warned me, ‘Tim is extremely quiet. Don’t let it unnerve you.'”
Cook apparently asked Scott what the biggest mistake she had made at Google was. “Despite the warning, I didn’t pay enough attention, and I started maybe confessing because he was so quiet,” she recalled. “I started confessing a little bit more about this mistake than I really needed to be telling a perfect stranger in an interview. And I realized all of a sudden that I was about to tell him something that probably was going to cost me the job.”
Fortunately (?), at that moment there was an earthquake and the Apple headquarters the interview was taking place in began swaying. Scott asked why the building was moving in this strange way, and Cook and the Apple engineer in the interview “couldn’t resist” explaining how the HQ was built on anti-earthquake rollers, and how they worked.
Given the level of perfectionism Apple apparently showed when constructing its new Apple Park campus, we have no trouble believing that Apple employees would enjoy a chance to wax lyrical about their design decisions.
As for Kim Scott, it appears she did well enough at her interview to be offered the job. Clearly Tim Cook’s quiet approach to interviews works wonders for honesty!
Source: Business Insider
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
One response to “Tim Cook’s secret weapon for job interviews? Silence”
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