Five reasons why you should consider hiring for attitude, not skills

When you’re going through the recruitment process, it can be easy to get tunnel vision and focus only on the candidates who meet the skills necessary for the job and not look at other factors.

Here at Creative Natives, we’re big fans of hiring for attitude. While skills and knowledge are important, they can be taught, whereas attitude and how people fit into your workplace can’t be. A person’s experience? Also important, but we think attitude trumps the lot.

So why do we (and many other businesses) prefer to hire for attitude rather than skills?

Oh let us count the ways… one, two…five. There’s five reasons why we hire for attitude – check them out.

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You’ll minimise personality clashes

You may meet a candidate and they’re ticking all of your skills and experience boxes – tick, tick, tick. After getting the candidate to meet with some of your team, the team reports back that they didn’t gel well and felt like the candidate’s personality wouldn’t match with everyone else. Are you still going to hire them at the risk of p*ssing off the rest of your team? At the potential risk of losing some team members if they have to work with someone they completely clash with? We say that a harmonious workplace is a happy workplace, while it’s not always possible to tell in the interview process, try to hire people who will get along with your current team.

They bring the enthusiasm

Ideally, you want someone who is excited and enthusiastic. Enthusiastic about the job, the work they’ll be doing and enthusiastic about your business. You want team members who are keen to dive in head first and get their hands dirty. They’re happy to pitch in if others need their assistance. They’re thrilled to be working with a new client or on a new project. Most importantly, enthusiasm is infectious. Someone is struggling a bit or is a little down? Your team members will support them and inject them with the energy they need to get back on track.

They’re more likely to be a cultural fit

Similar to ensuring that you don’t have personality clashes, you also need someone who fits in with your workplace culture. When you hire people with the right attitude, they’re more likely to add to your workplace culture rather than detract from it. Adding to, and strengthening the workplace culture also makes it more appealing for new potential employees, making yours an in-demand workplace!

They love learning

The most important part of hiring for attitude is that the candidate needs to love learning (and you’ve got to be willing to teach in return). They’ve got to be a keen bean for training and be like a sponge, soaking in everything the team tells them, especially if they’re going to catch up to where you need them to be at.

On the flip side, some parts of the creative industry move and change quickly, especially if new technology gets introduced. Candidates who have the experience and current skills, but aren’t willing to learn or upskill to learn anything new, may get left behind.

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There’s a larger candidate pool to pick from

It’s pretty simple – expand your parameters for candidates and you’ll have a greater candidate pool to choose from. In the areas of the creative industry where it might be difficult to find someone to fill a role, looking for people who may have less skills / not the right ones, but the right attitude for your workplace, means you’ll have a much greater chance of finding a new hire.

Are you sold and ready to do some hiring? Or do you need to chat about it more? Either way, get in touch at hello@creativenatives.com.au and we’ll be there to help.