“I try to be the most responsive person in the company,” Robbins recently said in an interview with Semafor, whether that be text, WhatsApp, Signal, or WebEx. “I respond faster than most anybody on my team across any communication medium that you want to communicate with me with.”

“I try to set that pace for people, and then you have to hire people that have similar desire to win, desire to move,” he continued. 

Candidates who exude the same ambition and urgency through prompt communication could stand out in the company’s crowded hiring pool. The tech business was receiving around 800,000 or more candidates a year for just over 10,000 open roles, according to its talent acquisition tech partner Avature—around a 1.25% acceptance rate. 

And as the company has trimmed its headcount and restructured in the post-pandemic hiring years, announcing 4,000 job cuts earlier this year, job competition is heating up. Robbins looks to employ applicants whose infectious energy matches his speed and propels the company forward. 

“It just permeates the org when you start doing that. Because if I hire people that want to succeed and want to move fast, then they’re going to get frustrated if they have people who aren’t that way,” Robbins said. 

“It takes a while, but you end up with an organization that moves faster.”

The business leaders looking to hire good communicators with ‘grit’ 

Being a good communicator with a good work ethic is proving to be desirable in hiring—especially in a tech-driven professional era starved for human skills. Many CEOs are now spotlighting the importance of human abilities to compliment the technical efficiencies of AI. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon even says that soft skills will be workers’ secret weapon to succeed in a competitive job market upended by the technology.

“My advice to people would be critical thinking, learn skills, learn your EQ [emotional quotient], learn how to be good in a meeting, how to communicate, how to write. You’ll have plenty of jobs,” Dimon told Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures in 2025. 

Despite getting thousands of applicants, Arvind Jain, the CEO of $7.2 billion AI startup Glean, says the company is starved for candidates who are genuinely committed—the top trait that separates the strongest hires from the pack. Intuit chief Sasan Goodarzi similarly doesn’t prioritize academic prestige or tech savvy when trying to glean an applicant’s potential. Instead, the fintech leader looks for “grit,” the same quality he says he admires in others like Amazon chief Andy Jassy. At times, Goodarzi went against his rule and hired people who couldn’t handle the pressure—now, he looks to employ talent who are actually hungry to win. 

“I was interviewing somebody yesterday, and the whole time my focus was do you actually have the grit?” Goodarzi told the WSJ in an interview earlier this year. “Have you had pain and suffering in your life? Do you actually know how to go through pain and suffering? Do you know how to get on the other side of pain and suffering and create greatness?”

Just like Intuit, asset management titan Blackstone also keeps its eyes peeled for grit in hand selecting the next cohort of business leaders. The company has solidified its standing as a kingmaker in the CEO recruitment space, meticulously narrowing down competitive talent pools to the very best choice. And the laborious recruitment process, that spans three to four months, engages the critical skills they’ll need as chief executives: grit, humility, resilience, and loyalty. 

“Being a CEO is a high-intensity sport,” Courtney della Cava, senior managing director and global head of portfolio talent at Blackstone, told Fortune in a 2025 interview. “For the right person, it’s extraordinary. But it’s not for everyone.”