- Google’s Asia Pacific vice president said its most successful employees have a “growth mindset.”
- She told CNBC she asked candidates what they’ve learned recently to see if they had this trait.
- Candidates who haven’t tapped into the hype around AI will struggle to stay relevant, she said.
A Google vice president shared an important trait she looks for when interviewing talent for a coveted position at the tech giant — and it’s all about having a “growth mindset.”
Sapna Chadha, vice president at Google Asia Pacific, told CNBC in an interview that she seeks out people “who want to exchange ideas, who want to innovate and are not happy with the status quo.”
She explained that among Google’s most successful staff “a growth mindset is a common characteristic … It’s one of the biggest drivers of good performance and results.”
Speaking with Insider back in 2021, Paul O’Keefe, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale-NUS College, described the growth mindset as a willingness to seek out and develop one’s interests or curiosities.
Per CNBC, Chadha quizzes candidates on what they’ve learned recently to discover what they’re doing to evolve: “Have they taken some initiative on their own to learn something that’s out of their domain? Because I want to learn from you.”
Part of having a growth mindset is viewing "your career not as a ladder to climb, but a jungle gym," which means being focused not just on moving up but across different areas to broaden your skillsets, Chadha said.
She added that it was particularly important in tech to continuously learn things, describing at least some familiarity with artificial intelligence, for instance, as important for candidates to "stay relevant."
O'Keefe offered advice on developing a growth mindset, emphasizing that it's all about nurturing your curiosity to increase your knowledge in different areas.
He recommended becoming a "T-shaped" person, which refers to people who have expertise in one area while also maintaining a broad range of interests.
"Once we start to expand our focus outside of our silo of say, interests, we start to understand the value of other information," said O'Keefe. "And we begin to see connections between what we know already from our own interests, and connecting it to new interests."
A former Google recruiter of five years, Jeff Sipe, recently told Insider that "soft skills are just as important" when trying to land a job in tech.
Having a positive mindset and being able to learn from mistakes and viewing it as a "challenge or an opportunity," can help you stand out, Sipe said.
