Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Jeff Fluhr, chief executive of Spreecast, a social video platform, says he thinks that the work background of job candidates is less important than their “softer characteristics,” like “the cultural fit, the chemistry fit, their personality traits, their level of optimism.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
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Bryant: Did you have the entrepreneurial itch when you were a kid?
Fluhr: The first thing I did as an entrepreneur was during middle school. I started selling candy to other students, which was not O.K. from the principal’s perspective. I would go to this wholesale candy distributor, buy a bunch of candy in large boxes, and then sell it at marked-up prices.
Bryant: Are there entrepreneurs in your family?
Fluhr: My grandfather started a women’s clothing store in Manhattan that is still around today, and now my mother runs that store. I always looked up to my grandfather, and how he was controlling his own destiny. My father took an early retirement package from his job as an engineering executive at AT&T, and he’s since started a couple of companies as well.
Bryant: What was your first job after college?
Fluhr: I worked at the Blackstone Group in New York. I was 22, and working on these deals where we were buying big manufacturing companies. I spent a few years doing that, and I learned a lot. I had a dual degree from Penn in engineering and finance, and I focused more on the finance side when I went to Blackstone. But I wanted to work with higher-growth technology companies.
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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times‘ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.
His next book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, will also be published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.