Aptitude vs. Attitude: Which Is More Important in a New Hire?

By Sarah Willis

‘‘Hire for attitude, train for skills’’ has become the catchphrase in recent years for recruitment. Organizations—and recruiters—are exhorted to follow the lead of companies like Southwest Airlines; the company's personality-centered hiring process is held up as an example of how to recruit exceptional staff that are the lynchpin in its USP: impeccable customer service.

Despite this, 57 percent of businesses across the globe say they’re facing a critical shortage of appropriately skilled entry-level workers, according to a report by management consultant McKinsey & Company. At the same time, as youth unemployment remains high, entry-level vacancies are going unfilled because of the skills gap.

What’s more, these are skills that are required far beyond entry-level. The founder of Youth About Business, an organization that runs leadership programs for young people, says that the number one issue facing American businesses looking to recruit entry-level staff is a simple inability to communicate in a professional manner. This is a skills shortage that goes right up to the C-suite, with chief financial officers saying that communication skills are one of the top three areas that their reportees need to develop in order to progress.

For companies with a keen eye on succession, no matter how aligned a candidate’s attitude is with a business, a basic inability to express themselves and communicate across a variety of stakeholders is likely to be severely off-putting.

So which quality is more important: attitude or aptitude?

Should you hire for attitude? Pros and cons

The main idea behind recruiting for attitude first is that skills can be taught, while attitude is a reflection of personality, something which is much harder to change. Hiring new employees for personality traits like flexibility, passion, and accountability makes sense for fast-changing workplaces.

‘‘Hire for attitude’’ proponents point out that one of the main reason new hires fail is due to personality or attitude issues, with "failing" being defined as getting negative appraisals, disciplinary action, being forced to leave, or getting fired. The reasons include a poor ability to receive and act upon feedback, lack of motivation, and unsuitable temperaments.

Recruiting is expensive, and it’s estimated that associated costs of new hires can run as high as 150 percent of a hire's annual salary, according to a study by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley. This covers lowered productivity and training time, as well as the cost of interviewing. For entry-level employees, it's reasonable to assume that this is even more true, particularly as they require training from more experienced and costly employees. Hiring for attitude can lessen the risk of companies losing their investment in an employee if it turns out that they aren't a fit with a company or can’t accept feedback.

The logical conclusion is that to recruit successfully, employers should look at the attitudes and personality traits of their top staff and then hunt for candidates who exhibit the same characteristics.

It makes sense in industries where there simply aren’t enough skilled people to fill the vacancies too, such as digital advertising. Pippa Glucklich, CEO of the Starcom Mediavest Group, was quoted in The Drum saying that her company was hiring for attitude in direct response to the lack of skilled professionals in the tech and marketing industries. For entry-level recruiters in pinched sectors, hiring for attitude may be a necessity rather than an ideal.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• Struggling to Build a Diverse Workforce? Why Well-Intentioned Companies Still Fall Short
• Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs Looking for Change After the Great Resignation
• Is a Marketable Skill Better Than a College Degree?
• 14 Recruiting Hacks to Find the Best Job Candidates
• 10 Workforce Management Tips for Small Business Owners and Managers

Is attitude alone good enough?

The first and very obvious problem of hiring solely for attitude is that while technical skills can be taught, not everyone has the ability or desire to learn these skills, especially at a proficient level.

Business acumen is another skill that many businesses say new college graduates lack. On the surface, this seems like an eminently teachable skillset, and one that is perhaps more suited to being honed in the workplace than in school.

But what if the reason an entry-level candidate fails to exhibit business acumen is simply because they have no real interest in a particular business or industry? Perhaps they are applying for a job because of family pressure or because their friends are applying for similar roles.

This would hardly make them good long-term prospects for companies looking to nurture talent, no matter how adaptable or coachable these candidates are. This scenario also shows how thin the line between attitude and aptitude is.

If an entry-level recruit does have the willingness to learn essential skills from scratch, it's still an expensive, time-consuming process. Developing in-depth industry-specific skillsets, let alone communication skills and critical thinking, takes months, if not years; and if an entry-level candidate is lacking beyond a certain level, or across many areas, it may not be economically viable to take on that person.

Hiring for attitude often relies upon creating hiring profiles, frequently based on the profiles of existing staff members. Circling back to communication skills, which is a good example of how soft skills and attitude blur, it might be tempting for a company recruiting on attitude to look for a person who reflects the communication styles of senior staff.

It’s not hard to see how this could unintentionally end up as a form of indirect discrimination—creating a lack of diversity within a company which then could end up diminishing a company's competitiveness too.

Attitude Vs. Aptitude in Hiring

In the end, both attitude and aptitude need to be taken into consideration, particularly when it comes to areas where there’s a strong crossover, such as industry or commercial awareness and motivation, or emotional intelligence and communication skills.

RELATED: The Value of Hiring from Within the Company