Scale AI CEO Says He Appears to be like for 3 Traits When He Interviews Candidates

One AI government’s interview guidelines has three easy containers.

“I’ve to interview throughout every kind of expertises,” Scale AI’s interim CEO Jason Droege mentioned on an episode of “Lenny’s” podcast launched on Thursday. “I can not be an professional in every thing, and so I cut back it down to simply three issues.”

Scale helps tech firms like Meta, OpenAI, and xAI enhance their chatbots by doing duties like rewriting bots’ responses. Droege took on the function of Scale’s interim CEO in June, after cofounder and CEO Alexandr Wang left the startup to hitch Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. Droege was the vp of Uber Eats and a enterprise accomplice at Benchmark earlier than he joined Scale in 2024 as chief technique officer.

He mentioned that the primary trait he seems for is that if somebody is a “curious drawback solver” and if they will categorical that verbally.

Droege mentioned his second criterion was humble collaboration. He gave an instance from his time constructing the Uber Eats administration workforce.

“Each time I might rent folks, I used to be making an attempt to compose virtually like an organism of strengths after which decrease the conflicts,” he mentioned.

Lastly, he mentioned he seems for people who find themselves good leaders.

“In case you simply do these three issues, I believe you’ve got a fairly excessive probability of success at the very least in a corporation,” he mentioned. “The world’s altering, proper? So that you do want folks which can be adaptable. So all of the expertise shouldn’t be essentially one-to-one related.”

However expertise is necessary for some professional roles, Droege mentioned.

“For sure roles, you completely want the precise expertise on this present market,” he mentioned. “You see this with researchers, as a result of the market’s transferring so quick, you do not have time to coach up some folks.”

The corporate didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from Enterprise Insider.

Droege joins a number of tech executives who say that have is now not the issue they most worth, particularly with AI within the combine.

Final week, Albert Cheng, the previous head of product at Duolingo and Grammarly, mentioned that high performers weren’t all the time those with huge expertise.

“I noticed a few of the highest performers simply being folks that had very excessive company, had that clock velocity, had that vitality,” Cheng mentioned. “They cared in regards to the mission, however they did not essentially must have deep expertise on that matter.”

Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, mentioned that initiative and adaptableness will likely be extra beneficial sooner or later as firms incorporate AI within the office.

“My guess is that the way forward for work belongs not anymore to the folks that have the fanciest levels or went to the perfect faculties, however to the people who find themselves adaptable, ahead considering, able to be taught, and able to embrace these instruments,” Roslansky mentioned at a hearth chat on the firm’s workplace final week.