Why You Should Hire for Attitude, Not Skill

Bad hiring decisions cost you! The costs of a bad hire go far beyond finances. Considering attitude when hiring someone will ensure that you make the right recruiting decisions.

In a Fast Company article, How Much A Bad Hire Will Actually Cost You, it was reported that:

• 41 percent of those surveyed lost worker productivity;
• 40 percent lost time due to recruiting and training another worker;
• 37 percent incurred expenses recruiting and training another worker;
• 36 percent endured a negative impact on employee morale; and
• 22 percent suffered a negative impact on client solutions.

In Fred Yager’s Dice article, The Cost of Bad Hiring Decisions Run High, the Harvard Business Review points out that as much as 80 percent of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions.

I don’t think anyone will disagree with the fact that bad hiring comes at a tremendous cost. Yet, how many of us actually invest in ensuring that our hiring processes and plan meet our desired goals? How many of us are ensuring that confirmation bias is not at play — the tendency for us to search for, interpret, or prioritize information in such a way that confirms our own beliefs or hypotheses?

The proposition: Spend the time, money and effort upfront. Go in with eyes wide open

Is it possible you already think that “you know what you’re looking for”? The flaw with this approach is that you then do not embrace the proven best practices of hiring that help you find the best employees for your company . As Mark Clark, Associate Professor at American University’s Kosgod School of Business argues,

“ Even though we know what works, which is putting more money up front in the form of more time from the managers, and that ends up resulting in better organisations, people don’t do it because that up-front thing is hardest to manage on a time scale.”

Think ahead and know who you are looking for. The best way to do this is to prepare a well-crafted job description. It is the first step in your hiring process. It makes it that much simpler because you cannot find the person you are not looking for.

• Be clear about the job position and title and where this sits within a particular department and the organization as a whole;
• Clarify the reporting structure;
• Summarize the position, what function it serves and what sort of responsibilities are expected of the role;
• Be specific about the type of knowledge, skills, language, and aptitude required for the role. Be clear about what is mandatory and what is useful but not required; and
• Review the job description periodically because changes within the business, industry, and climate, as well as your requirements, may change with time.

Attitude refers to the manner, disposition, feeling, position, etc with regard to a person or thing; tendency or orientation, especially of the mind. Mark Murphy’s company, Leadership IQ, conducted a survey that indicated that

46 percent of new hires failed within 18 months and that 89 percent of the time, it was for attitude, not lack of technical skill.

Hiring for attitude is about hiring someone for how they feel and think about something. The fact is a person’s attitude has a bearing on how they work, how they get along with workmates, and how they regard their company.

Everyone has an attitude. The hiring process should ideally focus on discovering what that attitude is, instead of taking any assertions made at face value. Anybody can say that they have a particular attitude but what you want to do is find opportunities to test that out — early.

Early detection ensures you make the right decision. Hiring costs money, takes up significant time and resources, and then results in training and onboarding activities to bring that new member into the fold. All of which will be wasted if you have hired someone who is not the right fit for your company.

Michael Alexis CEO of Team Building found a way to make sure they were hiring the right people. He says,

“One way we evaluate candidates is by giving them actual projects to work on. We will hire people on a short-term contract basis to complete tasks that are similar to what we would hire them for. With these projects, we expect to see a great attitude, communicate and ability to hit deadlines.”

Giving your candidates opportunities to complete challenges and projects is a great way to detect a good attitude.

Behavior, on the other hand, refers to a manner of behaving or acting; an observable activity in humans or animals; the aggregate of responses to internal and external stimuli.

Behavior can be either positive or negative and manifests in the way a person speaks, how he treats another and the particular acts he engages in. range from yelling, rudeness, and anger to telling sexual jokes or making disparaging remarks about a person’s race or culture. Negative behaviors

The thing is organizations tolerate certain behaviors and not others. It is a wide arc. Behaviors that are not tolerated, inappropriate or even wrong, need to be dealt with. This begs the question, how can we then detect such behaviors early?

The reason for early detection is so that the best possible hires are made. While you can help to modify behaviors once these are discovered, these behaviors are a manifestation of a person’s attitude. Lasting change, if any, must come from within, not directed nor demanded from the outside.

What does this mean? It means you’re looking to decide on whether to hire a person based more on the attitude a person has and less on their skill set or experience. Decisions based on this are much harder to do than assessing skills and experience. Skills can be talked about and explained. In some cases, candidates can also show you what they can do through a work sample test. This involves giving candidates a sample piece of work, such that they may encounter in their job and then assessing how well they performed.

Experience too is easier to review and decide on. You can review past job positions held and verify that the candidates worked at those positions stated. Attitudes, though, are a little harder to detect and discover. You have to rely on what you see and hear. You have to be alert and know what it is you are looking for and what to assess.

When candidates present themselves for interviews, most times, they are on their best behavior, they have prepared themselves as to how to behave and what to say. In other words, they are on guard to a point that makes discovery and detection that much harder to accomplish.

Hire for intellectual curiosity, for a willingness to always be learning and to problem solve. So how do you go about discovering attitude and behavior?

José Colmenares is a recruiter at Southwest Airlines. Southwest has been the country’s most acclaimed airline for the past decade. Part of Colmenares’s test tactics included a very involved and revealing group exercise called Fallout Shelter where applicants were told to imagine they were a committee charged with rebuilding civilization after a just declared nuclear war.

They were given a list of 15 people from different occupations: nurse, teacher, all-sport athlete, biochemist, pop singer and they had 10 minutes to make a unanimous decision about which seven people could remain in the only available fallout shelter. Colmenares reviewed and graded each person — as they got involved in a heated discussion on the topic — as either “passive”, “active” or “leader.”

Ensure you ask candidates, in your job interviews, to describe specific examples of their skills and situations where they used the skills successfully. This was revealed in a DDI (Development Dimensions International) and ERE (Electronic Recruiting Exchange) survey about the modern hiring practices which keep organizations on top.

One of the top findings indicated that 94 percent of the organizations surveyed already use this kind of interview and that it is so successful that nearly 40 percent of those organizations are planning to do even more in the future.

Take a look at the candidate’s application cover letter and resume. Consider what is said and unsaid. Take a look at any gaps and ask pointed questions about the gaps. When assessing how candidates respond to the questions, be sure to look for verbal/non-verbal cues as well as the time it takes to respond and how they provide an explanation. Spend more time listening and questioning and less time talking.

Although you cannot rely on them completely, references provide some help. References are just one more piece of the puzzle, that combined with other pieces help you gain a strong impression of the candidate you are faced with. When checking references, try to discover the real relationships in question between the candidate and the person providing the reference. This can provide many clues into whether the reference can be trusted.

Most organizations would limit this to the hiring manager, the potential boss, and probably a few peers. However, very rarely, will candidates meet someone who will work for them.

This is one way Google turns this upside down. Laszlo Bock mentioned this when discussing a few of Google’s secrets to hiring the best people. By meeting the people who will work for them, Google showed candidates how they are truly non-hierarchical. Adding someone from a completely different team (eg legal or finance) can be very useful in keeping the quality of the hire high.

In your overarching goal to find the right candidate, remember that the candidate is also reviewing you . Create situations in the interview where enough latitude is provided for people to showcase who they are, allowing them to bring forth their sense of fun, humor, enthusiasm, and passion.

Consider for a moment what the candidate is thinking about, what he might be looking for, what expectations he may have about your company based on what he has read, spoken to others about, and what is discussed on social channels. This will also provide guidance as to the type of questions to ask.

Something I once heard Oprah say, resonated deeply. Quoting Maya Angelou, Oprah said that when someone shows you who they are, believe them. In her words,

“ When people show you who they are the first time believe them. Not the 29th time. When a man doesn’t call you back the first time, when you are mistreated the first time, when someone shows you lack of integrity or dishonesty the first time, know that this will be followed many many other times, that will some point in life come back to haunt or hurt you….”

In our quest to hire quickly, to trust someone we’ve had a great conversation with or to solve a critical problem at our company, we may choose to disregard warning bells, however slight they may be. We do so at our own peril.

We should not aim to hire people only to work on changing them. We should hire the right people. We should learn how to read people, from the clothes they wear, the way they stand to the grip of their handshake.

Projects are a great way to show who has behavioral skills like communication, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence. It’s important to hire people who can deal with conflicts and provide solutions. Not only will you see how they can work within a team but you will see how they work with the company culture.

A great tool we offer at is our desk feature. Here candidates can work directly with other candidates or employees. Everyone can sign in, chat with one another, and work on projects together. As a manager, you can go in and see everyone’s work. You can see if candidates were able to finish their work on time and how well they worked with one another.

Not only do these projects help you hire the perfect fit for your company but these projects will be something that you actually need to be completed for your company. It’s great for both you and the candidates because the candidates will be able to see if they are a good fit for the work and you will be able to find someone with the right attitude and work ethic.

Remember that when hiring for attitude and behavior, there is no quick fix or simple answer. You’re looking to create situations where you can bring that candidate’s attitude to the forefront. You’re looking to ask the kind of questions that support that process. You’re looking to bring people in, outside the typical hiring team, who can add perspective and neutrality to that process.

All these issues make the idea of hiring a lot harder than you might want it to be. However, as Alan Davidson, an industrial psychologist in San Diego said, “ The overarching idea is that you hire hard and then manage easy”. That’s a good plan to have.

Editor and Program Director at Vertical Distinct, a media and learning organization, Rowena Morais is an entrepreneur, writer, and podcaster. She helps Human Resource and Technology professionals through a variety of articles, podcasts, interviews, and a range of internationally accredited and in-demand technical and professional courses offered throughout the Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

Originally published at https://talkingtalent.prosky.co.