i am a regular reader of seth godin's blog. most of his posts make you think and question the existing norms, mostly in marketing. once in a while comes a remarkable post. If you take it's essence and put it into other fields you will get some amazing insights. He made one such post yesterday. Read it here. Quoting his post...

Most people spend a lot of time to get an education.

They wait for the teacher (hopefully a great one) to give them something of value.

Many employees do the same thing at work. They wait for a boss (hopefully a great one) to give them responsibility or authority or experiences that add up to a career.

A few people, not many, but a few, take. They take the best education they can get, pushing teachers for more, finding things to do, exploring non-defined niches. They take more courses than the minimum, they invent new projects and they show up with questions.

If you are an employer(a start-up), who would you hire? a guy who waits for you to tell him what to do and then does it or a guy who spots patterns, takes initiative, volunteer and mobilize others to make something out of it. well i know it depends on the size of the company and the post which you are hiring for. But typically a start-up needs the second type of guys in its initial stages. does your current hiring process tell you which category the prospective employee belongs to?