Billionaire boss used disturbing interview test on candidates and wouldn’t hire anyone who failed
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images/Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Fast Company
The billionaire founder of the world's largest hedge fund allegedly put interview candidates through a very intense and unusual test to see whether they could handle the job.
Every boss has their own way of managing, but New York's Ray Dalio is so confident in his approach that he's quite literally written the book on 'success'.
Principles For Success is just one of the published works by the businessman, and it details the 'Principles' he came up with after founding Bridgewater Associates; a hedge fund that's managed as much as $160 billion for investors across the globe.
Dalio, who has a net worth of $14 billion as per Forbes, founded the company in 1975, and as he sought to grow the business he asked his employees to work according to his 'Principles' - essentially a set of 'rules' that he hoped would offer employees the answers to any potential issue they might face.
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It wasn't just Dalio's employees that lived by the Principles; the founder did too, and he sought to prove as much when he brought in one staff member, Katina Stefanova, to address her apparent failure to keep up with demands when it came to hiring new members of staff.
The recorded meeting has been detailed in Rob Copeland's book about Dalio, titled The Fund, and explains how Stefanova allegedly attempted to point out to Dalio that she had 'frequently' spoken with him about the pace at which new staffers were being hired.
Stefanova's response was an attempt to follow Bridgewater's internal handbook, which Copeland cites as saying: "Mistakes are not bad. They are opportunities to learn."
Staff were also encouraged to be open and honest under the Principles; however Stefanova's attempts to implement them allegedly backfired when Dalio argued she should have been more honest earlier and 'told him he was wrong' if he'd approved the pace of hiring during one of their discussions.
According to Copeland, Dalio then proceeded to 'scream' at Stefanova, calling her 'dumb' and making her cry until she ran out of the meeting room.
The Principles quickly challenged new hires as they had to make sure they followed the 'rules', so Dalio wanted to try and make sure Bridgewater was only hiring those who could handle it.
To do this, Copeland claims, the founder had the recording of his meeting with Stefanova edited to a version in which he was portrayed as 'a kind but firm questioner', while Stefanova, who was pregnant at the time, remained a woman in distress.
According to The Fund, Bridgewater then sent out this edited version of the meeting to potential new starters as an 'open-ended conversation-cum-personality quiz'.
Viewers were asked if they felt Stefanova had been dealt with 'fairly', or if they felt bad for her.
Those who expressed sympathy for Stefanova were, Copeland says, 'scored badly and deemed bad fits'.
"Those who admitted they found the display hard to digest saw their résumés swiftly meet the shredder," Copeland writes.
An excerpt from Copeland's book which detailed Dalio's meeting with Stefanova was published by Business Insider in 2023, at which time a spokesperson for Dalio dismissed the reporting as 'one of those classic tabloid books'.
The spokesperson pointed out Copeland had previously and unsuccessfully applied for a job at Bridgewater - something Copeland admits in the book - and claimed he went on to make a career of 'writing distorted stories about Bridgewater and Ray Dalio'.
"The picture the book paints is obviously implausible given Bridgewater's long track record of investment performance and its high percentage of long-tenured employees. Mr. Dalio doesn't want to divert his attention from more important things to discuss this trivial gossipy book," the spokesperson claimed.
UNILAD has reached out to Bridgewater and Dalio's legal team for comment.