Hiring For Attitude - A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting Star Performers with Both Tremendouse Skills and Superb Attitude is a new book by Mark Murphy.
"46% of the people hired will fail in the first 18 months on the job - 89% of the time, it's because of attitude"
I was first attracted to the "Hiring for Attitude" since my experience is people with good attitude seem way more engaged and are also more fun to work with. I often see the role of leadership as managing attitude. I always figure "People are going to have an attitude - may as well help it be a good one".
What I was worried about in a book on hiring for attitude was missing the skill, background or talent. Good attitude is great but it is clearly only one part of the puzzle.
The book has a number of interview questions suggested to figure out who has good attitude (I also learned that some of my favorite questions were bad ones like "what is the last book you read" and "what are your strengths and weaknesses" - Murphy believes these are asked too often so everyone has a rehearsed answer. Good questions are those that separate the good attitude from the bad attitude). It also explains how to build good interview questions.
Murphy is a big believer in textual analysis. Analyzing words to figure out if someone is telling the truth and to figure out their attitude. EG - high performers use past tense verbs when explaining a past situation because they are recalling a real situation. EG - People with nothing to say often hide behind fluffy adverbs.
Good attitude usually comes down to taking responsibility. I know in life, people tend to be more successful if they accept responsibility and it is not "the world did it to me".
Good book for anyone who is involved in hiring.
I have always been very sceptical of the interviewing process, as such. For the most part, it's a "studied" approach by both, the interviewer and the interviewee. The former studies the questions they should ask, the latter rehearse the answers.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my unscientific view, the hiring decision comes down to first impressions and other, subjective "feelings". Is it any surprise then to read the quoted statistics?
I believe that the most important hiring considerations should be the qualifications and the skill set. Invariably, there is always a probationary period, which should then be utilized for carefully observing all those traits, which one would like to learn about during the interviewing process.