No company has a stronger incentive to spot great CEOs than Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm.
It owns all or part of more than 200 portfolio companies, each of which must have a CEO who will be on the hook to double or triple Blackstone’s equity in just three to six years—a heavy lift. It’s little wonder then that Blackstone takes extraordinary measures to judge CEO candidates through structured interviews, psychometric tests, simulations, and much more. For decades, PE firms used a specific and seemingly logical formula for choosing portfolio company CEOs: Find someone who possessed hard skills—administrative, financial, sometimes technical—with a spotless record of delivering results no matter what it takes. But Courtney della Cava, who oversees talent for Blackstone’s portfolio companies, says an emphasis on experience and results with little regard for how they were achieved has given way to a hunger for qualities like empathy, humility and self awareness.
