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What is a 'personality hire' and how can hiring one benefit the workplace?
Scroll through thousands of job descriptions and you will see the importance of the right personality fit as part of what companies are looking for in their next new team member!
Recently, job market experts and job applicants alike shared on social media about the rise of “personality hires” in the workplace.
What is a personality hire and what is it not?
A recent survey reports that 7 in 10 employers highly prize an applicant’s personality as one of the top factors when deciding to offer a job. Factors like education are at 18% and appearance at 7% in terms of importance as deciding factors.
But what do we really mean when we say “hiring for personality?
Previous ideas of personality hiring may be outdated. People usually think of personality hires as an employee who gets hired primarily for their ability to:
- Bring good vibes to the office
- Make teammates and clients feel welcome and comfortable
- Bring high energy to the workplace
- Infect the team with positive feelings
- Learn the skills while on the job as it is secondary to the benefits their personality brings
After all, people say that it is easier to build work-related skills than teaching one to have a fun and energetic disposition.
However, the idea of hiring someone based only on their charisma is now considered harmful to the workplace and team goals.
True personality hiring that is effective and helpful is determining an applicant’s personality, checking how it would fit to company culture, and how both their technical skills and soft skills can help the team in accomplishing team goals.
How can personality matter in hiring?
Hiring that takes consideration of both skills and talents while also matching the personality to what the job requires is effective personality hiring.
Hiring teams who put the right person for the role are able to predict future behavior. It gives you the idea if an employee will be able to face pressure with grace during difficult client concerns or they will easily give up.
In addition, if the job requires traits like emotional intelligence, and communication skills, and the right person is hired for it, you will see better collaboration, and growth.
There are jobs, though, that require employees to have the right personality fit than have the skills outright. Here are some cases:
- When jobs are low-skilled and are entry-level roles
- Training of skills will be provided
- Small startups and companies where multitasking in expected
- Jobs where tasks undergo quick changes
- Management-related jobs
Tips to make personality hiring benefit the company
1. Determine first the traits that are non-negotiables for the role. Conduct a job analysis of each position to get to know the traits and qualities that are relevant to the job well. It will lead you to knowing who are high quality candidates.
2. Do not use general personality questions, but use measures that are relevant to the role. Interview questions and assessments should be around the context of work and of the specific role. Use reliable tools that will give you personality assessments and those that have some measure of specific traits. In this way, your results will be valid. Measure things like behavior and motivation, so that you know what makes the person grow and succeed in the workplace.
Use these tips to make your hiring processes effective. You will not be limiting your talent pool to those with high energy and charisma only, but you will have access to different personalities whose behaviors, skills, and talents align with your company goals. In this way, your hiring strategy will not be all about hiring big personalities and sacrificing skills.
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