What Does Hiring for Attitude Over Aptitude Really Mean?
A mentee asked me about job interviews, I told them about conversations
We were sitting around the conference room table with the two candidates details and our notes in front of us. We needed an engineer with specific skills for our team, but it wasn’t clear which candidate to choose. I was asked my opinion, who should we choose?
I knew that our team's success is wholly dependent on the quality of the hires and the teams and my leadership skills. So my answer was, “we should hire for attitude over aptitude”.
Here’s what I meant.
First, a tip about interviewing.
There has been a rise in behavioural interviewing techniques. These focus on understanding a person's behaviours through them communicating experiences from their past. These behavioural questions are an evolution from the industrial style questions.
It is a switch from, “what is your greatest weakness?” to “Can you tell me a time when you had to work on a difficult project, what did you learn about yourself?”.
