Elon Musk. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters Elon Musk's recruiting strategy at SpaceX was to demand the best person on the planet — whether they were there to build a rocket or serve ice cream on campus.

"Elon isolated to say, 'Find me the single best person on the freaking planet, then convince me why out of how many billion people on the planet that this is that guy,'" said Dolly Singh, SpaceX's former Director of Talent and CEO and founder of Thesis Couture.

"And he does that even if it's the cook. When we built a yogurt booth inside of SpaceX, he said, 'Go to Pinkberry and find me the employee of the month, and I want to hire the employee of the month.'”

Singh later said in an email to Business Insider that she and another recruiter went out and physically visited several local yogurt shops on guerilla visits and ultimately hired an employee from one of the visits.