Cycle to enhance your career prospects

There's an interview with Ed Williams, the Chief Executive of Right Move in the business section of the Times today.

For those who haven't moved house recently, Right Move is a web site that consolidates information from Estate Agents on property for sale or rent. According to the article it is a highly successful business, and one of Britain's most popular web sites.

Ed Williams ascribes the success of his site to three principles: keeping things simple, making sure the information it provides is up to date, and hiring the right people.  To quote the article, he has a penchant for people who do sports such as cycling and rowing, where there is no downtime, rather than football or cricket.

"We look for people who stick at something, who just keep doggedly at it".

I am never going to know whether cycling would have had a positive impact on (what some laughingly describe as) my career, because I got interested too late. When cycling does come up in conversation with work colleagues we tend to talk about the destinations, and the challenges we set ourselves. I suppose that sits well with the idea of doggedly determined cycling. I tend to skip over the sheer pleasure of just pootling around by myself, enjoying the sense of freedom. Emphasising my slow pace, and anti-social approach might reveal more than I really want to, about my lack of enthusiasm for corporate culture.