Back in his days at Amazon, Jeff Bezos always asked this odd job interview question. Psychology says it’s surprisingly revealing.

 

 

 

WORD FORMATION: Change the word in CAPITALS to fill in the blanks.

 

“When I worked at Amazon 1999-2006, Jeff Bezos’ favorite interview question was ‘are you a lucky person?’” former Amazon executive-turned-investor Dan Rose reported on X. 

Was Bezos a believer in rabbits’ feet and four-leaf clovers? Did he want to borrow the 1. ………… (MAGICIAN] dust of good luck from new hires to sprinkle over his young company? Not 2. ………. . (LIKE] 

Instead, a 3. ………….. [VARIOUS] of Bezos watchers and psychologists insist the question is an unusual but effective way to screen for some of the most important qualities for business success, including humility, initiative, and 4. ………. . [OPTIMISTIC] 

Bezos is 5. …………. [FAME] a huge fan of humility in his hires. He also reportedly asks job candidates about their previous mistakes, believing that the ability to admit and learn from errors is one of the best signs of true intelligence.

Asking if a potential hire is lucky seems to have nothing to do with the search for the 6. ………….. [INTELLECT] humble. But according to venture investor Patrick Mayr, asking about luck is actually a great way to gauge humility.

“For someone to acknowledge that they have benefitted from luck is a sign of 7. ……….. [MODEST],” he wrote in a blog post endorsing Bezos’s luck question.

To admit to luck shows you understand your good fortune is not just about your limitless smarts and 8. …………. [ASTOUND] work 9. ………… [ETHICAL]. It’s also about being in the right place and the right time. This is what self-described lucky guy Warren Buffett memorably calls “winning the ovarian lottery.” You aren’t a lone hero. There is space for 10. ………… [GRATEFUL] and self-improvement. (…)

 

In order to check your answers, read the whole article, go to: https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/jeff-bezos-favorite-job-interview-question-is-weird-psychology-says-its-also-brilliant

Key: 1. magic; 2. likely; 3. variety; 4. optimism; 5. famously; 6. intellectually; 7. modesty; 8. astounding; 9. ethic; 10. gratitude

 

Glossary

 

• lavish – large in amount, or impressive, and usually costing a lot of money
• to sprinkle – to scatter a few drops or small pieces of something
• to screen sb – to find out information about people who work or who want to work for you in order to make sure that they can be trusted
• to gauge – to measure or calculate
• smarts – the skill and intelligence that people need in order to be successful in difficult situations
• ovarian – connected with the ovaries (=either of the two organs in a woman’s body that produce eggs)
• rose-tinted – rose-coloured
• to smack – to hit against something with a lot of force
• abundance – a large quantity of sth
• (a) method in/to one’s madness – good reasons for one’s actions even though they may seem foolish or strange

 

 

Practice makes perfect

Watch the first 5 minutes (0:00-5:43) of the video and decide if the questions below are true or false:

 

 

1. According to the author, taking small risks can help you become luckier.

 

2. The “riskometer” is a tool used to measure a person’s success in business.

 

3. One of the main ideas in the video is that luck can be built over time through deliberate actions.

 

4. The speaker had a successful book published immediately after first meeting the publisher on the plane.

 

5. The wind is used as a metaphor in the text to describe the unpredictable nature of luck.

6. The risk that led to the book deal was a major, life-changing decision made on the spot.

7. The author felt jealous when the publisher showed more interest in her students’ work than her own.

Key: 1T; 2F; 3T; 4F; 5T; 6F; 7F

 

 

Fill in the sentence gaps with the words in bold below:

 

lavish                  smarts                abundance

screen                astounding                      rose-tinted

1. It seemed to be the most …………… question he had ever heard.

2. The dinner we were invited to was ………… . We could eat everything we wanted.

3. The area has an …………… of wildlife.

4. My auntie has a ……………. vision of the world.

5. You’ll have to use all your ………. to figure this one out.

6. They will ……….. all their candidates.

 

Key: 1. astounding; 2. lavish; 3. abundance; 4. rose-tinted; 5. smarts; 6. screen

 

Watch and revise!

 

Are You Lucky?

 Bezos’s Astounding Interview Insight

 

 

https://www.cloud.worldwideschool.pl/index.php/s/a39zsEztRgQbDgj

 

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