APPLE INC.

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

“It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then

tell them what to do, we hire smart people so they can
tell us what to do.” – Steve Jobs

B. Adhithya Rokhith
2016A4PS0416P
Introduction and Brief history

• Apple Inc. is relatively a new corporate name. Initially it was Apple Computers Inc. for almost
30 years since it was focusing only on PCs, computer hardware and computer software
arena.
• But due to the advent of technology and ever changing consumer need, they were able to
evolve and make a shift to consumer electronics.

It is the 1st company ever to reach $1 Trillion dollar valuation mark and only two other
companies hit that mark for a brief period of time (Microsoft and Amazon).

Why do they succeed?

• Their marketing strategy.
• Consumer friendly and innovative computers and other electronic goods.
• Innovative and closed proprietary hardware and software.
 Location and Employees

• The employees of Apple include that of companies acquired by Apple,

including NeXT and Emagic.
• They have around 132,000 employees, 504 retail stores in 24 countries.
• Headquarters of Apple is located in Cupertino, California, United States.
• iPhone being the primary product of Apple, the assembling of them takes
place in China dues to cheap labor and then is directly shipped to the
customers.
 Training Programs

• Many companies have internal training programs, but

Apple’s goes far further than most teaching employees
how to think like Steve Jobs.
• The Apple University, was established by Steve Jobs
and American sociologist Joel Podolny in order to
teach the new recruits on how to be a Apple
employee. It is situated alongside the headquarters in
the name of “City Centre”.
• The employee is enrolled for the classes here after his
recruitment stage and then goes for year long training
program.
• There were only 2 rules for the employees during their
training. “You don’t talk about what happens inside
Apple University”.
 The year long Training program

• Apple runs its training in-house, year round. The full-time faculty -- including instructors, writers and
editors -- create and teach the courses. Some faculty members come from universities like Yale,
Harvard, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, and M.I.T, and some continue to hold
positions at their schools while working for Apple.
• It teaches you how Apple makes business decisions.
• It teaches you how Apple communicates.
• It shows you what makes Apple, Apple.
• In a course called "What Makes Apple, Apple," The Google remote has 78
buttons and Apple has 3 buttons. The difference in product comes from a
difference in how teams are run. To teach the “less is more” approach Apple takes with most things.
• In one class about how Apple crafts its message an instructor showed a slide of Pablo Picasso's "The
Bull," a series of 11 drawings by the Spanish artist. The first plate is full of hooves, horns, and other
details; the last being the abstraction.
 Other training programs
• The genius experience Apple used to send new Genius employees to its campus in Cupertino as
a part of training process to teach the new recruits regarding their experience.
• Apple also uses the Lominger Competency model for retail employees, which is a set of traits,
skills and competencies designed to help you work towards certain goals.
• These (67 Lominger competencies) abilities and skills serve to measure a person’s effectiveness
in business. Lominger is a combination of the last names of system creators Michael M.
Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger.
• Training the store employees: 30,000 of the 40,000 Apple employees in the United States work
in the stores, so this has now become the defining experience of working at the company. Apple
picks a small percentage of lucky candidates from the stack, which are submitted online, of
course, through Apple's web site. The company screens for "affability" and "self-directedness,"
not tech savvy: The latter can be learned; the former is innate. Then Apple invites everyone to a
"seminar" in a conference room at a hotel. If you're a few minutes late, you're eliminated.
• Training commences with what is known as a “warm welcome.” As new employees enter the
room, Apple managers and trainers give them a standing ovation.
• There is more role-playing at Core training, as it’s known, this time with pointers on the
elaborate etiquette of interacting with customers.
• The idea is to instill in employees the notion that they are doing something far grander than just
selling or fixing products.