How grit can help get you from business school to the C-Suite

The promise of a more rapid climb up the corporate ladder has made Alpine's CIT program incredibly popular. It was the most applied-to job at Harvard Business School, Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania during the 2022/2023 school year, per emails viewed by Business Insider. While it's too soon to know how Alpine's CIT program ranked this year, it received 750 applications for just 12 slots.

Its acceptance rate of 1.6% means it's twice as hard to get into as Harvard. But unlike Harvard, there are no SAT tutors, guidebooks, or massive donations from well-off parents to help you get in.

So, what does one do to stand out? To better understand what Alpine is looking for in its future CEOs, BI spoke to some of Alpine's top executives and a former CIT who is now a CEO at an Alpine portfolio company. They said there's no shortcut to becoming a CIT, but certain attributes and life experiences could help a hopeful CEO stand out in the application process.

"I wish I could tell you to do these six things, and then you'll get this job," Tal Lee Anderman, Alpine's chief talent officer, told BI. But it isn't that simple, she said, noting that success will look different for each candidate.

Still, Anderman, Alpine's founder and CEO, and the former CIT walked BI through the program's rigorous application process and how they decide who makes the cut. Hint: Your GPA matters less than how you've recovered from getting knocked to the ground.

Here's more on how you can stand out from the crowd when applying to Alpine's hyper-competitive CEO-in-training program:

The Recruiting Process

The vast majority of CITs come from business schools, said Anderman, though the firm occasionally recruits in the larger labor market for CIT job openings that don't line up with the business school recruiting timeline.

Alpine focuses on five top schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, though it welcomes applications from all schools. It begins recruiting in students' first year with a series of info sessions, coffee chats, and lunches to introduce MBAs to the company and the training program.

Alpine CEO and founder Graham Weaver, who is also a longtime professor at Stanford's GSB, said Alpine is able to attract so many ambitious business school students because leadership is the most rewarding career path, and the CIT program, above all else, helps develop leaders.

"Students in this generation really want to make a difference in the world," Weaver said. "Being a leader is an unbelievable way to do that."

A more formal recruiting process begins in August of students' second year with another round of info sessions and a call for applications. Last year, they received 750 resumes, which they narrowed down to roughly 88 on-campus interviews across the five schools. Those campus interviews take place in big chunks, which allows them to whittle the list down to roughly 40 candidates.

Those 40 candidates are then interviewed in a "superday" format at Alpine's offices. There are five interviews for each candidate, including a financial and business acumen case study and a "deep dive" interview to assess the personality attributes of each candidate.

The firm aims to have offers in hand before Thanksgiving, and then in the spring, it matches its chosen CITs with open CEO and executive roles across its portfolio of companies (Not all CITs will be CEOs on day one, some will be placed in executive roles like CFO, CPO, CRO, or chief of staff). In August, the selected CITs travel to Alpine's San Francisco headquarters for two weeks of training before they start their executive roles.

Attributes and tips

Alpine's process is more focused on a candidate's cultural fit and abilities than their accomplishments.

"It's easy to teach plumbing or private equity. It's really hard to teach culture or core values," Anderman explained, repeating the advice she received from Weaver on her first day on the job.

As a result, there's no easy formula for success, said David Wurtzbacher, a former CIT who is now CEO and cofounder of an Alpine-backed business that is rolling up CPAs.

"You don't really need to prepare for the interview process, because the goal of the interview process is to deeply get to know the authentic true person that they are interviewing," Wurtzbacher said.

Alpine does this, according to Anderman, by looking for patterns in candidates' lives and tying them to three main attributes. They do this, Anderman said, so that they can get a better understanding of how candidates have handled adversity in their lives as a proxy for how they might handle the challenges of an executive role.

Anderman's own non-conventional career took her from college dropout to ballet dancer to the world of international development to business school. When she interviewed for her job at Alpine, Weaver asked how she could handle the job with no prior experience.

"I looked him in the eye and said: 'Because every other thing I've ever done I'd never done before, and I landed on my feet every single time.'"

"As soon as they get kicked in the teeth, that's when you find out what they're made of." — Alpine's founder and CEO

The first attribute the company looks for is IQ, but not in the traditional kind. Alpine wants people with an intellectual curiosity that makes them open to learning new things.

It also looks for emotional intelligence, which encompasses self-awareness, emotional regulation, and one's ability to understand and manage the emotional needs of others.

The third and most important attribute is the adversity quotient, also known as grit, resilience, or the will to win. This encompasses someone's ability to handle challenges, not give up, and keep pushing forward. Alpine's deep-dive interview process was developed by Geoff Smart, a respected talent advisor whose work has attracted recruiting business for some big clients over the years, including Blackstone and Citadel.

Anderman prefers this to traditional forms of recruiting as it provides context a traditional résumé may leave out.

"A 3.2 GPA from someone who was also working two full-time jobs and perhaps taking care of a loved one at home is so much more interesting than a 4.0 GPA with somebody who had private tutors and had their meals catered," Anderman said.

Indeed, the last thing the company needs is an MBA who thinks the job will be filled with jetsetting and power lunches at posh Manhattan restaurants.

"You're moving from Yale Law School and Harvard Business School to Jackson, Mississippi, to run a plumbing company," Anderman said as an example.

As a result, Alpine is full of people with non-traditional backgrounds, like Anderman, the former ballet dancer, as well as former basketball players, ex-Marines, and Teach For America teachers. Anderman recently interviewed a candidate for a role who had become a professional wrestler while living with family in Hong Kong.

All of this means that highlighting your quirks and unique hobbies may help. If someone likes cooking, Anderman said, a successful candidate may have written a cookbook, started a cookbook podcast, and created a large following. She pointed to Weaver's TikTok filled with leadership advice with over a million followers as one example. One CIT, a practicing yoga teacher, has led multiple yoga classes during CIT training summits.

"We're looking for any quirk that people have taken to a 12 out of 10," Anderman said.

But those quirks also have to showcase the most important attribute of all: grit. These jobs are not easy, and even with a predetermined training path, there are many opportunities for chaos. Weaver said the biggest mistake the firm has made in assessing candidates is whether they have grit, which is why it's so core to the recruitment process.

"Have these young leaders ever really been kicked in the teeth, and how did they show up after?" Weaver said, "As soon as they get kicked in the teeth, that's when you find out what they're made of."