Hire On Personality & Attitude, Not On Skills

Let’s face it, recruitment is tough. Whether you’re looking to hire your first employee in your Startup, or looking to add to just one team or department in your expanding business, the implications of who is hired can have some big implications.

If the recruitment has been carried out well, the hire can seriously change the game and help propel the business forward. However if it’s done badly, it can set the business back big time.

The cost to hire anybody usually runs into several thousands of dollars — because not only is there the cost of using an agency or running advertising to find candidates, it’s also time consuming to go through interviews, tests and other methods to discover the best candidate for the job.

And the cost doesn’t stop there — once they’ve been hired, you have to train them — possibly for months. This time adds up and comes from your bottom line. On average it takes three months for a new hire to start to become productive and start to give back, so that’s three months of salary during which you’re getting very little back in return.

With all of this cost and time needed, the choice of candidate has to be spot on. Sure, there will always be things out of your control that mean things don’t work out — like the new hire has to move away, or wants to go and do something else.

But if they’re going to stick around, they have to be the best. And in recent years, the ‘formula’ for what makes a good candidate has changed dramatically.

Look one or two decades ago, and a candidates qualifications were paramount to whether they should be hired or not. Over the years, the importance of qualifications for many roles and industries have been phased out, instead prioritising the experience and skills of the candidate.

Whilst qualifications & experience will always have some importance in terms of whether a candidate would be a good choice or not, today I want to argue that there is something else much, much more important to be considered.

And that is personality and attitude.

I consider myself a skilled marketeer and writer and have honed those skills over many years — but I truly believe that anybody else on the planet could reach that same skill level if they wanted to.

I have high level education from a University in the UK, but again anybody could get that too if they were willing to put in the time.

What does, however, make me a valuable person to have on anybody's team is my personality and attitude. I am determined to succeed, and are willing to do what it takes to do so. I will put in the hours, and make personal sacrifices to get where I need to get.

And my example is just one of millions that prove day-by-day just why personality and attitude is more important in candidates than skills of qualifications.

Skills and qualifications can be achieved by anybody with enough time. Some personality traits and attitudes just can’t always be taught and acquired by everybody.

I’m not saying that skills and qualifications should not be considered, just that personality & attitude are worth far much more to your business.

Hire on personality & attitude, not skills or qualifications.