VC giant Greylock, a Dropbox and Facebook investor, just hired a new partner to staff its portfolio's startups. Here's the No. 1 trait she looks for in executive candidates.
- Venture capital firm Greylock Partners has hired Holly Rose Faith as executive talent partner.
- When she interviews candidates for positions at startups, Faith said she looks for evidence of a growth mindset.
- She wants candidates who hope to be challenged in their new roles.
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On Wednesday, Greylock Partners announced a new hire: Holly Rose Faith, who will join the storied venture-capital firm as executive talent partner.
Faith was previously talent partner at New Enterprise Associates, where she helped founding CEOs in the enterprise technology and consumer space build out their executive teams. She told Business Insider she's especially excited to work with early-stage companies at Greylock, whose portfolio includes Airbnb, Dropbox, and Facebook.
When she interviews candidates for executive roles at startups, Faith said she's looking for evidence of a "growth mindset."
That's a term coined by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck to describe the belief that your talents can be developed. (The opposite is a "fixed mindset," which refers to the belief that your talents are innate and can't change much.) Dweck's research suggests that people with a growth mindset tend to be more successful.
Some managers "want to hire someone who's been there and done that before," Faith said. And while she acknowledged that sometimes specialized experience is necessary, in general she's seeking a candidate who is excited to try something just slightly out of their comfort zone. If their new job looks exactly like their old one, "how are they going to be challenged in that new role?" she said.
Faith said she asks job candidates: If they could redo a certain part of their career, what would they have done differently?
"The candidates that I have found to be successful in companies are those that have a level of self-awareness of what worked well and what didn't work well," she said. She's wary of "someone who doesn't think there's any area for improvement."
As for people who aspire to work as a startup executive, Faith had much the same advice: figure out what you're "optimizing for," she said. Maybe, for example, you want to get experience in a new sector, in a new role, or on a new team.
It's important to ask yourself, Faith said, "Is this an opportunity that is going to allow me to grow in ways that I haven't been able to grow before?"