Job-seekers may believe that an Ivy League degree or Fortune 500 work experience will land them a gig—but who they thank while walking into an interview could be more important than their educational pedigree.
Steven Bartlett, the founder and host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, took a chance on an applicant with a virtually blank CV for that very reason.
“I hired someone who’s CV was two lines. Their experience was zero,” Bartlett explained in a recent LinkedIn post. “Much of the reason why I gave her the job was because: She thanked the security guard by name on the way into the building.”
She continued to prove herself during the hiring process in seemingly small ways too—and those acts of humility got her the job, not her credentials.
“When she didn’t know something, in the interview she said ‘I don’t know that yet, but here’s how I’d figure it out,’” Bartlett explained. “After the interview she went and self-taught herself the answer she didn’t know, and emailed it to me within hours.”
The founder took a chance on the experience-less candidate, and it didn’t take long to pay off; Bartlett said that six months later, she has proved herself as one of the best hires he’s ever made. “Fifteen years of hiring has taught me that culture fit and character is MUCH harder to hire than experience, skills or education.”
Bartlett’s hiring philosophy is music to the ears of entry-level Gen Zers kickstarting their careers without full-time work on their resumes.
The CEOs with their own unique hiring philosophies
It has long been the rule of thumb that the candidate with the best degree, most work experience, and impressive credentials will come out of job interview rounds victorious. But with years of successful and failed hires under their belt, bosses are bucking the status quo and chasing talent with human skills, work ethic, and integrity.
David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, isn’t drawn to candidates with the highest IQ. Instead, he said he’s in the “camp of smart enough” when hiring talent at the $282 billion company; in lieu of focusing on educational pedigree, he gravitates towards applicants who are in touch with “human elements” including the ability to connect, be resilient, and determined. Experience is also “hugely underrated” and a “big differentiator for the firm,” Solomon noted. Attending Harvard University or being the brightest in the room may be impressive, but it won’t get job candidates far at the banking titan.
“You have to be smart enough, but the smartest person in the world without a whole package of other things [is] not going to navigate Goldman Sachs well, not going to be successful in Goldman Sachs over the long run,” Solomon revealed on Sequoia Capital’s Long Strange Trip podcast last year. “You can’t teach experience.”
And Danny Meyer, the founder of global fast-casual chain Shake Shack, couldn’t agree more. To run the company’s 510 restaurant locations like a well-oiled machine, he needs talent to have a high “hospitality quotient” (HQ) over IQ. And he’s searching for six green flags in Shake Shack talent: integrity, optimism, intellectual curiosity, work ethic, empathy, and self-awareness.
“I really don’t give a damn what your IQ is,” Meyer told Fortune’s Jason Del Rey at the Qualtrics X4 Summit last year. “What an IQ basically says is one’s aptitude for learning. What HQ is, is the degree to which someone is happier themselves when they provide happiness for someone else.”
Even the Oracle of Omaha and longtime Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett has fine-tuned his own hiring philosophy. After more than five decades helming the $1 trillion holding company, Buffett has witnessed professionals without glitzy Ivy League degrees succeed. And in planning his CEO succession last year, the investing mogul made one point clear: he wasn’t going to check the education section on candidates’ resumes.
“I never look at where a candidate has gone to school. Never!” Buffett wrote in his 2025 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. “Of course, there are great managers who attended the most famous schools. But there are plenty such as Pete who may have benefited by attending a less prestigious institution or even not bothering to finish school.”
