Love and Kisses

A person’s character is more likely to be revealed by pressure and distress than when things run smoothly. CEO Walt Bettinger of Charles Schwab knows this, and he uses this knowledge when screening job candidates. He takes them out to breakfast. What the prospective employees don’t know is he shows up early and asks the restaurant to deliberately mess up the order in exchange for a handsome tip. His test is meant to show how candidates deal with adversity. “Are they upset, are they frustrated, or are they understanding? Life is like that. Business is like that,” he says. Bettinger asks applicants about their greatest successes in life. “What I'm looking for is whether their view of the world revolves around others, or whether it revolves around them,” he said. “Then I’ll ask about their greatest failures in their life and see whether they own them or whether they were somebody else's fault.”