Billionaire Richard Branson Says Personalty Is More Important Than Skill When Hiring Employees

September 24, 2013 Leave a comment

Billionaire Richard Branson Says Personalty Is More Important Than Skill When Hiring Employees

JULIE BORT SEP. 23, 2013, 8:18 PM 2,144 4

Billionaire business mogul Richard Branson says that the single most important attribute when considering whether to hire someone is personality. This is even more important than if the person has the skills for the job. People who are “fun, friendly, caring and love helping others” are winners and the rest of the job can be taught, he wrote in an column published on LinkedIn on Monday. He explains:

“You can learn most jobs extremely quickly once you are thrown in the deep end. Within three months you can usually know the ins and outs of a role. If you are satisfied with the personality, then look at experience and expertise. Find people with transferable skills – you need team players who can pitch in and try their hand at all sorts of different jobs. While specialists are sometimes necessary, versatility should not be underestimated.”

That’s an interesting way to think about staffing up the workforce, especially in the tech industry, where startups are in bidding wars for developers and designers with certain tech skills and a good track record. He’s also not a big fan of what he calls “hiring in bulk,” where companies are so desperate to get help, that they relax their standards to fill the ranks. That would perhaps make him not so keen on the whole acqu-hire trend, unless the acquired company has a corporate culture that fits really well with the one doing the buying. He also cautions managers to be careful of jumping to judgement about personality from one interview. Interviews are stressful and introverts can get a bit quiet while extroverts can get a bit over-the-top. He advises managers to make an effort to really see a person’s personality. Yet, he says, managers shouldn’t be looking for a personality that conforms. It’s not about sameness, it’s about a well-balanced team. “Don’t be afraid of hiring mavericks. Somebody who thinks a little differently … Some of the best people we’ve ever hired didn’t seem to fit in at first, but proved to be indispensable over time.”

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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