Are candidate values or skills more important?
Our reader poll today asks: When interviewing job candidates, what’s more important to you in making your selection?
– I place equal emphasis on the balance between skills and values/background: 75.29%
– I value their background and values more than anything else: 19.3%
– I value their skills more than anything else: 5.41%
Balance matters. Clearly skills are important, but the emphasis on a candidate’s background and values trumps any skills interviewers are looking for. This seems pretty obvious given that skills can be taught in a relatively short period of time compared to the values a candidate grew up with. Bob Herbold, former COO at Microsoft, has offered a revealing and simple way to dig into a candidate’s values and background — all you have to do is ask one line of questioning related to who influenced the candidate the most while growing up. The answers to that line of questioning should reveal the core of his or her character.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
The focus on values seems intuitive but Brendan Reid writes in “Stealing the corner office” that focusing on values or the very similar – hiring someone who is a good fit for the organization – while intuitive can be the absolute wrong thing to do particularly if you need change in your organization. The “good fit” or your current ” values” might just be what is killing your organization.