Hire for Skills not Attitude

I am always on the lookout for talent. Nothing brings me more  joy than being around people smarter than me. I have an eye for spotting people who are good at what they do and often  make time to interact with these people. That’s my learning style. Recently, I got the opportunity to do some consulting work for a certain company. What caught my eye was a particular individual from human resources who seemed to be super organized and did things at a pace I had never seen before. I said to myself this would be the ideal candidate for the Vice President(VP) Human Resources position. I was convinced. So, I made time to connect with this individual to understand what makes them tick. All was well until I enquired of the person’s hiring strategy and they  confidently said “I hire for attitude and then train for skills”. My heart sank and here I thought I had a good hire for the tech firm. I just smiled but at the back of my mind, I saw  an animated big red  “X” and a buzzing sound appear on the candidate’s profile. Today, I am going to share with you why in my opinion I don’t agree with this “hire for attitude and train for skills” mantra

What’s with the attitude?

While skills can be compromised in favor of attitude is certain industries. This is not true in technology. Understand that when hiring for your startup/ company you need the best of the best. This will improve your quality of work and therefore make your product better if not best. Now, because the individuals who are skilled  to the level of becoming experts are rare; It’s very common  for them to be perceived as having an attitude by the common folk. This is because these experts know their value and won’t easily be convinced otherwise/ manipulated. You need experts on your team if you want to be a business leader in your industry. The attitude problem usually goes away with the right remuneration in my experience. Just pay up, it will all be worth it when your company starts making some serious waves.  

Training Costs

The cost of training an individual from the ground up is usually high. As big of an investment as this is, why then channel it to an individual with no capacity but has the right attitude? Think of it this way, why would you award a performance merit scholarship to a “C” student when an “A” student is available and has the capacity? Some will say attitude and you may be right. Just know your return on investment will be negligible. You may even realize losses in the process. Training an individual who already has the talent or capacity may help your startup/ business accelerate towards profitability faster or just realize value faster.

Loss of Competitive Advantage

There is nothing more disheartening than seeing a large firm with more resources being beaten to pulp by a small competitor who is operating at say, three quarters or even half the  capacity of the large firm. You tend to wonder where these big firms go wrong. Is it because of the many structures in between that make them take hits or what? I think it’s all in the hiring strategy. It is important you hire skilled people especially in the strategic and technical positions. Unless you are the only player in the industry, you can’t afford to be playing russian roulette with your business. You will need to be innovative, strategic and you can’t do that with a non-skilled labor force that only has a “can-do” attitude. Times have changed, if you do not continuously improve on your offerings you can potentially lose customers to  your competitors.

Wrapping Up

As a business that seeks to make a name for itself in the market or at least make money,  you need the skills. Take the time to aggressively go after talent. Have a relationship with academic institutions and professional bodies to access some of the individuals that can really do some level 99999 stuff. It’s important especially at a  strategic level to hire individuals who  can comfortably air out their opinions during decision making in order to come up with what is best for the company. A leader surrounded by a bunch of “yes-man” teammates faces the risk of having their company run into the ground or their reputation tarnished in the market. Hire for skills.