Your personality and attitude can influence your way of thinking.
If you only focus on hiring talent purely because of their skills and without taking into account their approach, it may lead to adverse effects.
While skills can be developed through training and courses, the most effective way to develop your inner character and mental fortitude are through experience. Most times, these are people who have learned to overcome difficult situations.
Finding that type of self-motivated applicant who aligns with your brand values isn’t easy. That’s one reason why personality and attitude are so valuable to recruit for.
The Importance of Understanding the Personality and Attitude of Candidates
The personality and attitude of candidates play a significant role in having a successful workforce.
Without recruiting for this, you’re limiting your opportunities since you’re leaving their potential and long-term value out of the equation. These are competencies that not all candidates with the skills and qualifications for the job have.
Even if they don’t have the full expertise now, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not a good fit.
It just means that they’re not the best person at this point in time.
But, that doesn’t stop you or them from bridging the gap so that they become the ideal candidate you’ve been looking for in the near future. What’s more difficult in HR and recruitment is finding someone that aligns with your cultural values. Someone that’s also genuinely interested, motivated, and passionate about what they do.
Example Qualities of an Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate is not only someone with technical expertise. But, someone with a positive outlook that can work under pressure, motivate the team, and influence better performance to scale growth.
Aside from their hard skills and qualifications, there are other key competencies a candidate could have that a formal resume doesn’t reveal.
That being said, here are 6 qualities to look out for in your next candidates:
- Leadership skills
- Reliability
- Growth mindset
- Resilience
- Team players
- Strong work ethic
To make a better hiring decision, you’ll need to refer to data related to the candidate’s performance. This enables you to get insight into their true strengths, weaknesses, and competencies.
How to Recruit for Personality and Attitude
We’ll go through 5 steps you can take to optimize your hiring process by focusing your recruiting efforts on those that match your corporate cultural values.
With some of the recruitment strategies listed, it gives you insight into the qualities of a candidate that a written job application doesn’t. By gathering this type of information, it allows you to not only understand them better. But, it also enables you to create a better candidate experience.
1. Take Note of the Subtle Hints Shown in an Interview
Speaking with a candidate is one way to assess their communication skills and get insight into what they’re like in the workplace.
Here are some examples of the subtle hints I’m referring to:
- Eye contact
- Body language
- Tone of voice
If they can’t hold eye contact while they’re speaking to you, how could you expect them to speak confidently and take the lead in a setting where other managers are involved?
By asking them certain questions, it also shows how they’re likely to respond in different situations. Plus, you get to see their framework and approach when it comes to applying what they know.
2. Use Questionnaires
While questionnaires are similar to a written job application, it still enables you to get a good understanding of where they’re currently at.
The only significant downside is that you don’t get to see how they would respond to the questions in person. This means you won’t be able to assess their communication skills and see subtle cues such as body language.
Even so, this still enables you to get candidates to proactively engage in the recruitment process as opposed to just reviewing the words written on their resume.
3. Get Feedback From Existing Employees About the Workplace
Another way to find the key details about the personality and attitude of candidates is to get feedback from your existing team and employees. Learn from their perspective what they believe would make someone best to work with in your company environment.
For instance, what type of person would they like to work with to make their job easier and more productive?
Using the information given by your current employees provides you with insight into the other soft skills and personality traits to look out for. When you’ve optimized the recruitment process like this and the new candidate gets on well with your team, it can improve the team’s chemistry and experience.
Anyhow, it’s good practice to utilize feedback in the workplace. Aside from keeping people engaged, it’s led to results such as a 14.9% lower employee turnover rate.
4. Optimize Your Candidate Assessments
Candidate assessments are effective for testing the knowledge and expertise of applicants.
You’re giving them a task to complete to evaluate their performance and on-the-job skills. This removes unconscious bias and means you can hire objectively since you’re taking a data-driven approach.
There is also a range of assessments you can give to determine what they’re capable of. More importantly, it gives you the ability to verify each applicant’s level of expertise.
5. Integrate a Personality Test
The enneagram test is an effective screening tool to determine if they’re a good match for both the company and job vacancy.
With personality tests in general, you get a deeper understanding of the candidates in terms of the following:
- Interests
- Preferences
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
Using this type of information, it’s easier to find out where the candidate would best operate as well as the areas where there’s room for improvement.
Meaning, you’re able to prepare ahead of time as to how you can bridge those gaps and make each candidate even more valuable assets. This could also be an attractive value proposition to offer when promoting a job opportunity and writing the description.
Testlify is always looking for ways to optimize the recruitment process so that it’s seamless for organizations to hire the best talent at ease.
They offer a range of pre-employment screening tools to save you both time and money.
Skilled but Toxic Employees Aren’t Worth It
Hiring skilled employees immediately to fill a short-term job vacancy is reasonable.
But, it’s not worth hiring a skilled yet toxic employee that’s expected to be in the organization in the long-term. A negative attitude is contagious, which prevents the business from reaching its full potential and scaling as fast as it could.
Most of all, it affects your reputation. This takes years to build yet a single moment to tarnish.
