November 17, 2014: Attitude

This is part 4 of a 7-part series on the hiring process.

By the time a candidate walks through your door for an interview, she has passed at least 2 tests already: qualification and experience.  There may be others - a skills test for a administrative assistance, data entry operator, electronics theory.  The list of possibilities is endless, but every candidate will have passed those two tests.

Every interviewer has her own list of things she wants to find in an interview.  Some interviewers want to see how the candidate deals with pressure.  Some want to test the candidate to see if her skills are what her resume claims they are.  Some want to simply fit the job requirements to a candidate's skills and move on.

Of all the things that may become apparent in an interview, attitude is the single most important thing.  As long as the candidate passes the initial screens for qualifications and experience, attitude almost always determines the rest.  If a candidate is simply unable to communicate well, or is slovenly, or in some other way shows that he has unable to function to the position's social requirements, he will fail.  But those kinds of failures are infrequent.  Attitude drives the decision in most cases.

You've heard the adage "Attitude determines altitude"?  Yes, it's cliche.  And it is also true to a certain extent.

Attitude is key because attitude determines potential.  In a previous post I wrote about how I would much rather have someone with a longer learning curve and higher potential than a short learning curve and lower potential.  How does attitude determine potential?  What qualities does an attitude of success have?

1) Willingness to take risks.  Educated, reasonable risks.  If a person does not take risks, he will never achieve greatness in anything.
2) Drive to succeed.  In your business, "success" can be anything.  Sales performance, quality artistic output, great industrial design, delivering all packages on time without damage.  Whatever it is, the individual has to be internally motivated to succeed.
3) Engagement.  The candidate must be interested and engaged in your endeavor, whatever it happens to be.  Candidates should always have some questions for you.  The best employee ever to be on my team was extraordinarily engaged.  If there was something he didn't understand, he'd ask until he did understand.  When I gave him an assignment, he'd bring me a proposal of hoe he would accomplish it and ask for my input.  I'd give him suggestions, we'd go back and forth, and then he'd go away and finish it.  And then he'd ask for something else to do.
4) Team-centered thought process.  There are many very smart people in the world.  Not all of them are willing to do what must be done to accomplish the job.  I knew a manager once who was working on a large project.  It became clear that the project was under-resourced.  No additional resources were available for this highly specific task.  So he put on his boots and got to work, turning wrenches and wrapping parts, doing what he could to help.

I place very little value on a "good soldier" attitude.  Employees who are very obedient are also unwilling to take a risk.  Risk is required to grow, and companies that don't grow, die.  An obedient employee is unlikely to tell me when I'm wrong.

These attitudinal traits are all leadership traits.  When you filter for these traits in particular, you run the risk of having 8 people on a team who all want to be a team lead.  Some will relish the competition and being surrounded by competence.  Some will realize that their chances for a leadership role may take a while to develop, and they will leave.  Hiring this kind of person may increase your attrition rate.  It will also deepen your potential leadership pool, drive your team to a completely different level of performance, and allow you to achieve far more than the bare minimum a less-motivated team will achieve.

Attitude determines potential in one simple mechanism: a positive, results-driven attitude leads the individual to learn and grow.  Anyone lacking a positive results-driven attitude will only ever be able to what he is trained to do, as opposed to what he is capable of doing.  And wouldn't you rather have someone who is achieving everything she is capable of instead of only what you have told her to do?