When Olipop CEO Ben Goodwin is interviewing a candidate for a job, he isn’t looking for a lengthy tenure at a prestigious company, or a plethora of hard skills. Instead, one trait stands out amongst the most desirable people, he says: Passion.
People who have “that real fire in their belly” and a motivation to succeed are more attractive than those who only have an impressive resume, Goodwin tells CNBC Make It.
“Between passion and technical acumen, passion always wins out,” says the 40-year-old CEO. “If you have enough real passion, you’ll typically learn the acumen.” If it’s the other way around, however, an employee may be unfulfilled by their work, or feel detached from the company mission — which are both crucial for an engaged, productive team, Goodwin says.
On a larger scale, employers are placing less importance on hard skills in the workplace in favor of qualities like adaptability, conflict mitigation, innovative thinking and public speaking, according to LinkedIn’s “Skills on the Rise 2025” report.
Passion can seem like a cliche, but recruiters agree that it’s more important than most people think. Nolan Church, who’s worked in talent acquisition in companies like Google and DoorDash and who’s currently the CEO of talent marketplace Continuum, even recommends including what you’re passionate about on your resume, at the very end under “interests.”
“If you give a s— about something, it tells me that you have the potential to give a s— about your work,” Church told CNBC Make It in 2023.
For Goodwin, that fire in a candidate’s belly can also contribute to an almost “protective” attitude about their work and the company mission. They’re more careful with their decision making and are more considerate of their team, he says.
He uses himself as an example. “There’s been moments throughout my career where I’ve turned down fairly material amounts of money, and even at times when I really could have used it,” says Goodwin. “But it was like, this is short-term relief to the exclusion of the long-term mission. I’m either serious about [Olipop’s mission] it or I’m not, and [passion] helps give you a kind of guiding philosophy.”
As for the trait that sounds alarm bells for Goodwin, it’s an inflated ego. “We cannot hire people whose personal egos are ever bigger than the mission of the team,” he says. He specifically asks job candidates questions about self-awareness to get a better look at their ego, Goodwin adds.
“To keep your ego in check, you have to know what your derailers are, which means you have to be humble enough or vulnerable enough to admit to them, which also means you need strategies to mitigate them,” he says. “Somebody who’s able to communicate that cluster [has] probably done a decent amount of self-work.”
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