NY Times, June 25, 2010
This interview with Robert W. Selander, chief executive of MasterCard, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Robert W. Selander, retiring in July as C.E.O. of MasterCard, a job he held for 14 years, says it's important to relate to all of a company's stakeholders.
Selander spent a reasonable amount of time living overseas and recognized that that there is more similarity than difference in fundamental values, wanting to give your children more opportunity or at least as much as you had in life, etc. It’s true in a lot of aspects of business as well. But we tend to focus on differences, and perhaps exaggerate or accentuate those beyond the reality of what we have to worry about.
He realised that someone with great presentation skills isn’t necessarily the greatest manager and vice versa and that veneer shouldn’t distract you from the substance. When interviewing someone for a job he wants to know two or three of their strengths and weaknesses and asks them about those two or three things that they’ve acknowledged are flat sides, and how you think they should work on those, to ensure those don’t become barriers to success. When hiring he looks for leadership and results.
And he is looking for somebody who’s had multinational experience since they do business everywhere in the world. Finally he looks for presence.
If he could only ask 2 questions in an interview it would be, “Share with me two situations, work-related, that you’re proud of — one where there was something achieved as a result of your personal initiative, and the other where the achievement was a result of the team getting something done, which you don’t think they would otherwise have gotten done without your leadership.” He is looking for the feedback on the personal initiative and the leadership.
He has been working hard on listening skills for a few years .
His best career advice for new college grads is that when they come out of undergraduate school, going out and getting some work experience is really very helpful. Getting experience in bigger, broader companies where there are more things that they can learn and do is a good idea, because the likelihood of exactly picking out their career from the get-go is very low. As a first job, he says they should find generally a larger company where there are more things that they can get involved with, where there may be more comprehensive planned training activities to help them with certain skills that they’re going to need.
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