Elon Musk says he has ‘fallen prey’ to fancy resumes, shares foolproof plan he swears by during hiring

World's richest person Elon Musk has recently admitted that he has fallen prey to “pixie dust” resumes, saying that finding the right employee is not that simple.

Speaking at a special podcast hosted jointly by Stripe cofounder John Collison and tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Musk said he now relies on the ‘wow’ factor when it comes to hiring.

Elon Musk, who runs companies like Tesla, CEO and SpaceX, is known for his micromanagement style of leadership, and this quality does not escape hiring. Speaking at the podcast, he said that during the first few years of building SpaceX, he hired a few thousand employees until he did not have the time to do so.

During the time, Musk learned his lessons on how to hire the suitable candidate, which is no easy feat.

He recalled the time when companies like people were “carpet bombing” Tesla’s leaders and engineers with recruiting calls. At the time, he said, there was a general idea that Tesla employees had “pixie dust,” which would make any business successful just because they worked at the car company.

The Tesla CEO admitted that he had fallen prey to such a notion in the early years.

“I’ve fallen prey to the pixie dust thing as well, where it’s like, ‘Oh, we’ll hire someone from Google or Apple, and they’ll be immediately successful,’” he said.

Musk however noted that it's “not how it works.”

“People are people. There’s no magical pixie dust. So when we had the pixie dust problem, we would get relentlessly recruited from,” he said.

Elon Musk's hiring tip

Elon Musk spitted out some foolproof tips when it comes to hiring, and stressed on the importance of “goodness of heart”.

“I underweighted that at one point. So, are they a good person? Trustworthy? Smart and talented and hard working? If so, you can add domain knowledge,” he said.

Musk said he now relies on his staff to look for the ‘wow factor’ in an employee or list out the “evidence of exceptional ability,” when it comes to hiring.

“Generally, what I tell people—I tell myself, I guess, aspirationally—is, don’t look at the résumé,” he said.

“Just believe your interaction. The résumé may seem very impressive…but if the conversation after 20 minutes is not ‘Wow,’ you should believe the conversation, not the paper.”

At Elon Musk's companies, working hard will get one in the good books of the leader, he revealed.

“If somebody gets things done, I love them, and if they don’t, I hate them. So it’s pretty straightforward. It’s not like some idiosyncratic thing. If somebody executes well, I’m a huge fan, and if they don’t, I’m not,” Musk said.