3 Reasons To Avoid Making A Personality Hire

Personality hires have become a popular way that organizations are recruiting, interviewing and hiring—based on a winning set of soft skills that make up for a lack of technical skills.

While there are certainly advantages to the practice, it also warrants caution and careful decision making, because there can be significant downsides for companies and also for candidates.

Personality hires are on the rise because the talent market is so tight—employers are struggling to find great people, so they’re increasingly willing to reduce their requirements for some technical skills.

In addition, things are moving so fast that organizations are realizing today’s skills may go out of date—and they’ll need to train employees anyway in order to keep up with the demands of the market. As a result, they may be willing to trade off hard skills in order to fill a role.

What Is a Personality Hire

When companies make a personality hire, they are prioritizing someone’s approach, behavior and character, more than their technical competencies. In fact, companies are increasingly listing personality characteristics in their job advertisements. At the top of companies’ lists of desired traits are friendliness, confidence, enthusiasm, reliability and motivation, according to data from Adzuna.

Personality hires are based on soft skills like communication, relationship-building, teamwork or flexibility. And while they’re called soft skills, they really aren’t soft at all. Instead, they dictate someone’s ability to get things done and interact successfully across the organization. Fully 54% of hiring managers believe soft skills are highly important, according to a poll from resumegenius.

Personality Hiring Can Be Effective

There are some legitimate reasons to make personality hires, because personality has been linked with performance and satisfaction.

• When people are honest and humble, they tend to demonstrate more integrity and positive work ethic (showing up on time, following through, etc.).
• People with personality characteristics of dependability and achievement-orientation, tend to perform better.
• Those who are more extroverted and conscientious, are more likely to build strong relationships and be promoted to leadership roles—and then be effective in leadership.
• And employees who are more extroverted and conscientious tend to experience greater job satisfaction.

All of these are based on academic studies highlighted in the journal of Personality Science.

The Downsides of Personality Hires

In addition to the advantages, it’s important to know there are also downsides to personality hires. As you’re considering a personality hire, you’ll also want to be careful about a few key issues.

1 – Personality Hires Can Reduce Performance

Perhaps the most important reason to pause before making a personality hire is to ensure that you’re not creating a barrier to performance. It’s key to hire people who mix well with the team and invigorate the culture, of course, but if they can’t do the job or if they require too much time to train, they’ll detract from the performance of the team.

People are highly influenced by the choices and behaviors of those around them, so if a personality hire isn’t able to learn technical skills in order to perform, it can drag the whole team down.

Hire people who bring a great attitude and energy—but also who can learn the technical side of the job and contribute to strong performance over time.

2 – Personality Hires Can Reduce Motivation

Another critical reason to be cautious about a personality hire is to avoid setting people up to fail. We all have an instinct to matter, and we want a sense of purpose. We want to feel good about our impact.

If you hire someone who can’t do the job, or who will take too long to get up to speed, their sense of esteem and identity may suffer—and this can degrade motivation, engagement and even retention.

They may wonder why you hired them or feel a mismatch between their strengths and the requirements of the job. Ultimately, if people don’t believe they are able to add value, they are likely to find another place to work—where they can.

Hire people who are committed, dedicated and motivated, but also who have the capacity to make a meaningful contribution after they’ve had time to build their technical acumen.

3 – Personality Hires Can Create Resentment

Companies must also beware of personality hires so they don’t cause resentment on the team. People demand fairness. In fact, in a study of 60 different societies, a sense of equity and justice were among the most important values for individuals and groups.

If someone is hired for personality alone, they run the risk of being a drain on the team or perceived as failing to make a contribution—resulting in resentment, frustration or disengagement among team members.

Connections, camaraderie and relationships are fundamental to happiness and fulfillment—and teamwork is often how we accomplish these. So, putting someone in a negative light with coworkers can degrade their experience as well as that of the team.

Hire people who are great at connecting and relating, but also who can be trusted to get work done, accomplish tasks and pull their weight after a reasonable amount of training.

A No-Win Situation

The combination of these factors—impacts on performance, motivation and team relationships create the potential for a no-win situation for the personality hire.

Importantly, 32% of people believe personality hires may not receive promotions because they lack the necessary skills or experience. On the other hand, 39% express concern that personality hires receive promotions they haven’t worked for, based on their personality. All of this is according to a poll by Monster.

So, the challenge for a personality hire is they may face barriers to career growth—and if they don’t they may face barriers in terms of resentful teammates.

The solution is balance—ensuring that new hires have positive personality characteristics as well as solid skills they can build from. Hiring someone on personality alone will cause challenges—but it’s certainly possible to hire based on a foundation of skills that will require additional development.

Hiring for Personality Plus

Any candidate will deliver a mix of strengths—and perhaps most important are those who can fit into the culture and also move it forward in positive directions.

Find people with great personalities, but also those who can learn the technical side of the job quickly enough to perform, contribute to the team and feel great about the work they’re doing.