Trustworthiness

I am recruiting for a key position within my portfolio and as I sort through resumes and speak to people on the phone my key question is, “Who this person? Is she (or he) someone I can trust? Is honesty important to this person? Is this person someone who will develop others or is he (or she) just looking out for himself?”

The majority of the resumes I receive only take me a few seconds to read; that’s because they don’t address the key components of the advertised position, meaning that the senders haven’t thought about what I’m looking for – or else they just can’t read…maybe it’s both.

When society has jettisoned the transcendent, the immutable; when it has attacked the idea of a constant benchmark – then what is left to trust? There is nothing. I want people who I do not need to treat as machines that I manipulate, in fact I won’t do that – I insist on looking at people as people. That, however, can be a problem when people look at themselves and each other as machines to be manipulated or as biological accidents with no lasting worth.

It’s tough to recruit, or to do basic business, when you have long-term thinking in a short-term world.

Trustworthiness is a vanishing virtue.