When Hiring, Is Personality More Important Than Skills and Competence?

Editor’s Note: As the summer winds down, I’m republishing some of my most well read posts here on The Skeptical Guy. This one is from back in March 2015.

A LONG TIME AGO, I worked with a company that valued managers with great personalities over just about anything else.

There was one guy who corporate management thought was a superstar because he had such great “presence.” He had been lauded with all sorts of company honors, and he certainly did make a great impression when you met him. But the longer you knew him, the harder it was to tell just what he did that made him so great.

A guy who worked closely with him — who later worked for me — started talking about this superstar manager one night over a drink. When I asked him what made ‘Will” such a star, this guy rolled his eyes and said, “Will can be really difficult to work for. Yeah, he has great  presence, but he also has the attention span of a gnat.”

Personality usually trumps skill set

THAT’S WHEN I FIGURED OUT that when it came to impressing corporate leadership, personality and presence seemed to top competence and skills any day of the week.

I had a flashback to all of this when a survey from the Swedish global learning institute Hyper Island titled Personality Trumps Skill in Search for Digital Talent came across my desk. It surveyed “over 500 top leaders (CEO’s, Managing Directors, Creative Directors) and employees across agencies and companies within the communication, tech and business development industries, measuring perceptions of future challenges, readiness for those challenges, and the skills and qualities needed to meet them.”

The survey found, not surprisingly, that ”Personality” was overwhelmingly seen as the most desirable quality in a worker, with 78 percent of respondents giving it a top rating as opposed to “Skill set” at only 39 percent. “Cultural Alignment” came in at 53 percent.

I get that personality is important, but is it that much more important than the skills someone brings to the table? I don’t think so — but I seem to be in the minority on that.

“Specific competence is less important”

AS THE CEO of Hyper Island observed:

“What we found most compelling about this research is how clearly it highlights that personality, not competence, is the determining factor of who’s going to get the most attractive jobs among tomorrow’s recruits. There is also a growing desire for talent with a unique combination of skill and flexibility — people who can collaborate, adapt quickly and are enjoyable company, but also have the drive to get things done. All those traits boil down to a personality that is essential for businesses operating in an ever-changing digital landscape. Thus, specific competence is less important.”

People need to bring a lot of different skills to the table in today’s complex and rapid-changing world of work, and personality along with and the need to collaborate and adapt are critical. You’ll get no argument from me on that.

But at the core of all of that personality and collaboration needs to be a solid foundation based on a strong and specific skill set. I don’t buy the notion that “specific competence is less important,” and I think that’s a dangerous road for hiring and talent managers to go down.

In other words, personality and presence will only take you so far if you don’t have the bottom-line skills to get the job done.

And Lord help you if you also have “the attention span of a gnat.”

Other trends and insights

And your latest dose of AI news … 

• California Legislature Approves Bill Proposing Sweeping AI Restrictions (From NY Times.com)
• Workers and employers are turning to AI chatbots for career coaching (From Forbes.com)
• How AI can smooth the move to a four-day workweek (From Fast Company.com)

ALSO: You know a headline is doing its job when one makes you think, “I just gotta read this story!” That’s how it was for me when I saw this headline on SF Gate that said California tech companies see laid-off workers as “table scraps,” recruiters say. And the subhead on the story added this — One recruiter said that a senior director even called them “damaged goods.” If that doesn’t make you want to stop and read the story, nothing will.

ALSO-ALSO: Artificial Intelligence is coming to our cell phones, and as you might have guessed, Apple is leading the charge with what they call “Apple Intelligence.” But ZDNet is saying that maybe you should skip the annual iPhone update, and they lay out the reasons why in Why you shouldn’t buy the iPhone 16 for Apple Intelligence.

Workplace insight of the week

“If self-awareness is one of the hallmarks of a humble leader, then a boss I had at a university public relations job was the least self-aware and humble boss on the planet.

For example, a few months after one of my co-workers lost their spouse, they were — understandably to any self-aware person — still grieving and often cried during the work day. We would all console her or at least give her the space she needed.

Not this boss. On one of her bad days, our co-worker was crying in the breakroom, and the boss happened to walk in. Instead of offering condolences or a compassionate ear, she sighed heavily and said, “Aren’t you over this yet?”

Her insensitivity was nothing new to any of us. She had been rude and inconsiderate to all of us at some point or another, but this one took the cake. Our co-worker was devastated, in a new way, by this insensitive comment, and she, like many of the rest of us, found our way into new jobs far away from this boss in short order.

As Alaina Love points out, humble leaders create a culture where everyone feels valued, and perhaps more importantly, safe to express themselves, maybe especially in times of grief or loss. This boss missed the mark on nearly all of Love’s characteristics of a humble leader.

She was not open to criticism or changing her mind, even if she had been proven wrong. She didn’t recognize the strength and skill of her team, often undermining us and discounting the work we did. As a result, none of us trusted her, let alone liked her.

This is a recipe for disaster because good, talented people will not endure this treatment for long. They have the talent it takes to get hired elsewhere, preferably in a place with a humble leader who will appreciate what they bring to the table and create a safe and nurturing place for them to do so.

As Love writes: “While someone with a commanding personality and assertive behavior may get your attention, the benefits of building an organization with humble leaders are far superior in impact.”

— Candace Chellew, in the August 27 SmartBrief on Leadership newsletter