Myths about hiring for attitude and temperament

Posted by

Carolyne Burns

Employers often focus on skills rather than attitudes, in an attempt to hire 'the best of the best', but they're forgetting that a champion team will always beat a team of champions.

When sifting through a pile of resumes, people typically only spend around six seconds skimming through each one and glancing at the applicant's supposed skills. Based on this alone, they decide who makes the first cut and gets through for an interview.

Myth #1: The most skilled candidate is always the best hire

It might seem like a smart approach if you're looking to pick out the most skilled and talented applicants to join your team, but that's a myth. Hiring on skills alone is actually a recipe for disaster.

Instead, you need to pay more attention to an applicant's attitude, temperament and work ethic – the kind of things that will help them be a great team player.

Employers who haven't learned this lesson tend to hire on skills and then fire on attitudes, again and again. They can't figure out what they're doing wrong when the successful candidates look so good on paper but then don't fit in.

Continually hiring the wrong people is a very costly mistake, because it takes a heavy toll on the business in terms of productivity and morale.

Meanwhile, you'll never know about the ones that got away, those hidden gems with a great attitude who would have been an excellent fit for the job – and for the team – but didn't shine through in their resume so they didn't even get an interview.

Myth #2: You can’t assess attitude and temperament before hiring

Part of the problem is that you can't trust what you read in resumes. Around 78 per cent of jobseekers lie on their CV, according to a 2020 survey by reference-check firm Checkster. Not surprisingly, the most common lie is claiming proficiency in in-demand skills which they don't actually have – seemingly in an attempt to 'fake it 'til they make it'.

It's even worse now that jobseekers are turning to ChatGPT to churn out their resume and cover letter. Today's job applications are reading more and more like a fairy tale.

Related article: ChatGPT ghostwrites CVs

Along with assuming the highest-skilled applicants are the actually best candidates for the job, the other myth is that you can't get insights into a person's actual attitude and temperament before they walk in the door and start work.

If you want insights into job applicants then don't just let them tell you who they want to be. Also let them show you who they really are.

Using short surveys instead of relying on resumes, Expr3ss! quickly and cost-effectively pinpoints job applicants with the right skills, attitudes, temperament and cultural fit for the role. You can tailor the questions to ensure they unambiguously address the requirements of the job.

The surveys typically take around six minutes, while ensuring that the best applicants make it through to the interview stage, not just those who seem to have the best skills. Surveys can also include "deal-breaker" questions to ensure applicants have all the necessary qualifications and certifications before they are recommended for an interview.

Myth #3: Hiring for skills alone saves time and money

A team with the right attitudes and chemistry can outperform a group of highly skilled individuals who can't work well together. That's why focusing on attitudes and temperament is critical, because it's much easier to teach skills than it is to change attitudes.

On top of that, it's much easier to help a new hire improve their skills if they've got the right attitude. That includes being happy to collaborate, eager to learn and open to constructive feedback.

Believing the myth that you should focus purely on skills and chase 'the best of the best' is especially dangerous if you're in an industry that's plagued by talent shortages. You can find yourself in a bidding war for a handful of highly-skilled people who might not even be right for you.

If talent is tight then it's even more important to search for those hidden gems, those people who would be a great asset to the business even if they're a little rough around the edges. Expr3ss! lets you look beyond skills alone to find those hidden gems.

Of course, no two workplaces and no two jobs are exactly the same. That's why you can also use Expr3ss! to look at your current workforce to determine what makes your best employees tick. This way, you can more easily identify applicants who'd make a fantastic addition to your high-performing team.

Using Expr3ss! you can conduct a cultural survey, looking at your superstars across every area of operations. From this, Expr3ss! can create customised benchmarks for every role. These help you find the perfect fit for each specific role in your specific business, rather than relying on generic industry-wide benchmarks.

Don't believe the myth that you should only be chasing the job applicants with the best skills. Someone with a can-do attitude can always brush up on their skills to build up your team, while someone with a chip on their shoulder is more likely to drag you all down.