Hiring for attitude and culture has become the new hash tag. The shift has gone from hiring someone who has a certain skill set to finding someone who will fit perfectly within your Workplace Culture.
But what is Workplace Culture? Workplace Culture is defined as the character and personality of your organisation. It’s what makes your organisation unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviours, and attitudes. An employer who has been hiring for 20 years is used to looking at a position that needs to be filled within their office, thinking about what skills would be needed to do said position and up goes the ad on Seek.
But times are changing and the new generation of workers that are coming through are expanding their horizons, they are making career decisions because they want to “try something new”. Gone are the days when someone stays in a role for 10+ years because they just want something solid. The empowerment that is given to the younger generation to dream big and achieve is strong and influential.
What does this mean for business owners? Less experienced candidates applying but more candidates who are hungry to learn new skills and experience something new. This means a business owner who once in an interview would have had a check list of skills to go through to ensure all the relevant criteria was met and then based the decision on hiring them on that list. Now, the first interview is a coffee.
An informal chat just to see what you are like as a person, how you converse, how you present yourself and most importantly- would you fit in with the team. Once that chat is out of the way comes the second interview where the obligatory HR questions come out, tell us your strengths and weaknesses etc.
Hiring someone who doesn’t necessarily have the skills, but has that positive attitude to learn, that will motivate and drive the rest of your team because of their enthusiasm is clearly better than hiring someone with bad habits and a bad attitude but has every box you need ticked off from a skills perspective.
So look into your Workplace Culture and see who shares your company vision, who wants to move forward with you and ensure the people who you bring on board also have that drive and determination to work with you to move forward. Hiring for culture over skill is a must in this changing world because skills can be taught, attitude can’t.