Blog Post: Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill

• Most organizations hire for technical  competence and expertise hoping that  the technically gifted will bring with  them the right attitude.  
• You will hire people for what they  know and what they can do. You will  most often fire people for who they  are. 
• What people know is less important  than who they are. What we know  changes very fast in an information-based world, who we are  changes over a long period of time.  
• Hiring someone with a bad or marginal  attitude who is technically competent  and expecting the Organizational  Development or Training Department to  change them is a decision you’ll pay  for over and over again. 
• When you’ve got fewer people doing  more work you can’t afford to make a  sloppy hiring decision.   The most  admired companies in the world are  absolutely rigorous about hiring— it's  a strategic priority for them. They  know the price they will pay for "just  filling a position." 

Why is rigorous hiring critical to  your success?:

You’re not hiring employees—you’re  hiring ambassadors of your business.

The people you hire today will  determine the kind of culture and  brand you build tomorrow.

People are your greatest point of  differentiation and the biggest  determining factor in creating  competitive advantage.

Strategies for Hiring World Class  People:

 1.  Define what “World-Class” looks  like by identifying the superstars who  are currently in your business. Create  a profile of common attributes these  superstars possess. Use this profile  as your hiring target.     

2.  Use clever and creative recruiting  ads that attract the right kind of  people to begin with. If you’re 
looking for fun, entrepreneurial,  innovative people, do your recruiting  ads reflect this? Let the recruiting  process be the first screen through  which a prospective candidate must  pass. 

3.  Design your interviewing process  to make the candidate feel as  comfortable as possible. You’ll get  better information this way. Greet  them, tell them what to expect, answer  their initial questions. 

4.  Create interviewing questions that  screen for attitude as well as skill  (see Hiring Questions). 

5.  Use multiple interviews (remember  RIGOR has its rewards) to get multiple  perspectives. At Southwest Airlines,  most candidates get a minimum of three  one-on-one interviews. When the  interviews are over, all of the  interviewers must come to consensus  regarding the candidate. Keep people  who actually work in the applicant’s  functional area in the selection  process. 

6.  Create an uplifting interview  experience for the candidate.  Regardless of how the interview turns  out, your company wants you to have a  great experience! Not everyone is a  “fit” with the company, but everyone  is a potential customer. You want  every interviewee to walk away telling  a great story!

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