Skills vs Attitude:
When searching for that perfect new hire to join your team you of course want to ensure you make the right decision but is recruiting on skills and experience more important than hiring on attitude?
So, what is the difference?
From a hiring perspective, skills reflect the expertise and knowledge of a candidate whether this be from an educational background or experience and skills they have gained through previous employment. Such as an engineering business may be looking for candidates who have qualified with a certain technical qualification or engineering experience with a niche field.
Attitude is all about the candidate, their personality, and their willingness to learn, develop and passion for the product or the company. For example, a candidate may not have the right skills and experience but offer commitment and the eagerness to learn.
Looking at the statistics:
So, on average latest statistics show that only 20% of new job hirers are successful in the long run and actually commit to the job role and company long term.
60% of the new hirers who do not last long term is down to personality and cultural fit within an organisation.
Whereas 14% of candidates actually leave or lose their job due to lack of experience or skills.
So, what is best?
There is no straight answer here as it is very much dependable on the role that the hirer is looking to recruit in, for example health care professional such as nurses or those within a certain discipline it will be essential that they have relevant qualifications and experience to fulfil the role and duties.
However, there is a significant benefit for hiring on attitude, Employees with the right attitude, positive mindset and passion in their personality means a better culture fit for your organisation.
Skills can be taught and anyone with the right attitude who is willing to learn and potentially moulded often prove to be more successful and more long term.
Personality and culture fit is crucial in any business, someone may have the right skills and experience on paper but having a bad attitude can prove a negative impact on your business.
Organisations will have their own methods of recruitment with each organisation taking a different approach and like above there are some roles where skills and experience is crucial to the job role, but always bare in mind that stats suggest outing attitude above skills and experience is more successful in the longer term.
If you would like some assistance with recruiting or struggling to find the right candidate please give us a call for a general chat and we would be happy to share some of our experience, advice and tips.
