Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López Hires People Who Know More
Plenty of executives say they want to hire people smarter than themselves. Fewer describe what that looks like when the new hire starts disagreeing with the boss in front of the team.
Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López, who chairs Hawkers and runs O’Hara Administration, described his version in an interview. He looks for experience first, he said, and he wants people who will push back.
The Hiring Test Alejandro Betancourt López Uses
“When I hire people, I take a real hard look at the experience they have,” he said. “I like to know that they know more than me, that they’re better than me, that they have better knowledge than me on that industry.”
The second half of the test concerns temperament. “I like to hire people that are at least better prepared, smarter, and that can really… Not afraid of telling me what to do, because they know better,” Alejandro Betancourt López said. Specialists who have spent years on one industry earn more say in his decisions, he added, and he takes their opinions seriously once he hires them.
People come first in his investment decisions too. “Management is everything in any company that’s successful,” he said in a 2023 interview, calling people his “first point of focus” when choosing where to put money.
Hawkers offers two examples. Claudio Scagni ran the technical side of the Elche plant when local production began in 2021. Pedro Beneyto, the chief executive named in October 2022, arrived after about three years at the Suárez jewelry group and holds a degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Modaes reported.
Stepping Back Once the Team Is Set
The payoff for hiring well, in his telling, is time. “I make sure the structure of command is in place and I can go in and out as I please,” he said of his holdings. “It doesn’t need me, but it has my attention every time I can be there.”
Bad hires carry the opposite cost. Speaking about boards and reporting lines, Alejandro Betancourt López said a backer gets pulled in whenever something breaks, and the depth of the problem decides how far. “If you don’t have the right people, then you have to be the people,” he said, a situation that drains “a lot of time and energy and resources” from the rest of a family office.
Alejandro Betancourt has taken the same approach at BDK Financial Group, the West African banking group he helped found. He said he no longer follows its day-to-day operations because professional bankers run it, and he summed up the arrangement plainly: “you have the right people, you just enjoy the ride.”