Cisco CEO says he’s the fastest messenger on his team—and hires people with the same urgency and ‘desire to move’

Professionals are now tasked with keeping up with a dizzying number of communications platforms, from Slack to Linked In. And being a quick communicator with a clear inbox may give you a leg up at $504 billion tech giant Cisco—CEO Chuck Robbins prides himself on his rapid-fire replies, and looks to hire talent who are just as driven as him. “I try to be the most responsive person in the company,” Robbins recently said in an interview with Semafor, whether that be text, Whats App, Signal, or Web Ex. “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 efficienci