When looking for the perfect candidate, there are several factors to consider. Their experience, skills, desired salary, and career goals are just a few of the things that must be compatible prior to bringing a new person on board. All too often, a crucial factor is missing from the hiring process: a candidate’s personality.
A potential hire’s personality should be a key factor in the hiring process. In fact, this aspect can actually be even more important than skills or experience and should be prioritized as such. Why? Because team and company culture should be given as much consideration, if not more, as the candidate’s experience when you’re thinking about a future employee’s contributions to productivity, profitability, and a high ROI.
The Connection Between a Balanced Culture and Productivity
A company’s well-balanced culture and personality are often hailed as the “key to success”. Teams within these companies work together seamlessly (allowing for occasional snafus), communicate extremely well, and have no issues tackling bumps in the road or collaborating on various tasks. This means higher productivity, profits, and a more pleasant work environment.
An unbalanced team, on the other hand, is noticeably unproductive and can even be disruptive to a company overall. Think of a team consisting of individuals who, when working solo, excel and meet all goals efficiently and effectively, but when asked to collaborate, they can’t even get through an initial briefing without disagreeing with or resisting each other.
Another scenario is that of a well-balanced team who’ve had little to no issues in the work environment. Then, a new hire is introduced, and their personality just doesn’t quite fit. This leads to a lot of miscommunication or even office spats and drama which weighs heavily on productivity and in turn, profits and ROI. Even worse, this can lead to the loss of valuable team members leaving for a better environment and the need to use the time, resources and funds to begin hiring all over again.
Opportunity for Growth
You cannot change a candidate’s personality so that it fits into your company. Personality is unique to each and every individual and cannot be taught, learned, or even changed. Skills and experience, however, can be. The idea is to not disregard skills and experience in favor of personality but to understand the opportunities that come with the personality-driven hiring process.
No company wants to hire a completely inexperienced candidate who has never worked in their industry before. Of course not. However, let’s say a candidate’s personality is a perfect fit for your company, but their previous job title seems too different, or their skillset lacks one or two qualities for the position. This is where the opportunity lies.
The golden opportunity here is that your company gets to train them in the skills they need according to how and what you need them learn. Often, these candidates will have a stellar foundation of transferable skills that demonstrate their ability to enhance them within your company.
When hiring a potential candidate with the right personality, they will fit into your company and will be able to easily learn any lacking skills and earn more experience in an environment that is an encouraging fit for them. This gives extra motivation to both the candidate and the company, allowing both to flourish and ensure a positive ROI from the hiring process.
Personality-Based Hiring Made Easy
Even if personality-based hiring doesn’t feel right for your company, it doesn’t mean the aspect should be ignored altogether. If your company prefers skills and experience-based hiring, simply incorporating a candidate’s personality into the assessment can save a lot of time, productivity, and money down the road, leading to perfect fit with all the skills necessary to succeed immediately.
At GoGig, we’ve created innovative solutions for the hiring process and include personality assessments on each of our candidates to help hiring managers and recruiters alike make the right decision for their company. If you’re ready to find and hire the perfect fit for your company, sign up today and let's get started.
