Rare traits

In my experience as a recruiter and from talking with friends that hire their own employees, I have learned that there are three traits that are very rare, and thus very valuable.  These traits are, in order of increasing rareness:

1. A personality that can be trusted in front of customers - AKA The Ability To Look Someone In The Eye, The Ability To Not Say Inappropriate Things, or The Ability To Not Ramble In Conversation.
2. A technical mind - Evidenced by the confidence and patience to learn new ideas EVEN if it requires math, programming concepts, circuit design, mechanical knackery or modifying your Windows registry.
3. Ownership of problems -  It's easy to find people that can be cogs in a large corporate machine.  America is full of people that lean on "policies" and hold up a process when they don't know the answer and don't know who to ask. It's really hard to find people that will roll up their sleeves and not back down until the problem is solved.

The first and second traits are relatively common in isolation.  If you have any two of these traits, you are a rare person.  If you have all three, mix in a little initiative and find the people that are looking for you.

Sponsorship

After watching a recent Nike commercial that (literally) spotlights some of my favorite skateboarders, I was thinking about what it means to be sponsored.  Paul Rodriguez, Omar Salazar and Theotis Beasley have made it about as far as any skateboarder could dream to go.  Being paid to skateboard for an international company with bottomless pockets and being filmed in exclusive locations that are aired on primetime television are the dreams of little kids practicing in driveways across the world.


You can see the video I'm talking about below.  As you watch it, think about what they did to get there.