Why You
Should Hire for Attitude, Not Skill
Focusing on a candidate's softer qualities is better for your
company in the long term.
When
evaluating a potential hire it's tempting to bring on
board someone with the technical skills to immediately get down to work. But a
smarter strategy is to vet candidates carefully for their softer qualities.
That's according to Donna Wells, CEO of online training platform Mindflash, who says any skill can be
trained, but things like personality and temperament have a huge effect on how
someone will meld into your team and perform for your customers. Here's why she
says you need to hire for attitude, not skill.
1. Most people don't possess all the skills listed in a job
description.
Wells
says only a small percentage of candidates are a 100-percent match with what a
hiring manager includes on a job description. Whether you want to blame
American universities that are not preparing graduates or employers who have
unrealistic expectations, you should see the current U.S. job and labor market
for what it is.
2. Hiring for attitude opens up a wider pool of candidates.
At
Mindflash Wells found someone who didn't know how to use the company's customer
service software, but had experience managing a restaurant and possessed a
strong work ethic and a customer service mindset. "He
had a winning personality that translated beautifully over the phone," she
says. "So we grabbed him because we saw he had exceptional soft skills and
just took the time to train him in our software and the tools that we
use."
3. You can't anticipate the hard skills you will need several
years out.
That's
because the technical requirements for business are constantly evolving. Think
about the tools and processes your company uses today. Are they the
same ones you employed five years ago? For example, many Mindflash software
developers are coding in a language called Node-JS, which they were not doing
two years ago. "In no way would I have had that on the job description for
the software developers we hired three or four years ago," she says.
By Christina Desmarais
http://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/why-you-should-hire-for-attitude-not-skill.html?cid=em01020week18a
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