Hire For Attitude Train For Skill [Is This a Real Thing]

Job Search

Oct 9

For years big publications and career coaches have been talking about hiring for attitude and training for skills. Many recruiters on the other hand will push back against this idea saying that it introduces too much bias to the recruiting process and simply isn’t practical.

In this article, I’m going to talk about:

What it really means to hire for attitude and train for skill.

The pros and cons of each.

When it’s more likely for companies to hire for attitude and train skills.

Bust some myths about the effects of hiring for attitude first.

And explain what this means for you in a job search.

What Does Hiring for Attitude Mean

The phrase “hire for attitude, train for skills” has been around for a long time, but it seems that it’s been an increasingly discussed topic in the past few years. That’s probably because so many people are unemployed and frustrated with job searching.

There seems to be an ongoing discord between coaches, executives, and recruiters. So let’s define what this phrase really means.

Hiring for attitude is also known in the recruiting world as values-based recruitment. It focuses first on the attributes of a candidate and performance-related skills second. It doesn’t mean that skills are unimportant, but that they take a back seat to an individual’s inherent value system and traits.

In other words, things like your humility, worth ethic, perseverance, and initiative become more important than whether you have the technical skills to perform the job. These traits are things you either have or don’t have. While organizations can foster environments that bring out these traits, it’s very difficult to instill them in someone who doesn’t have them already.

Are There Companies That Hire for Attitude Over Skills

While the vast majority of hiring managers and recruiters by extension prioritize years of experience over attitude, there are some who claim to hire for attitude and train skills.

The phrase itself most likely comes from Herb Kelleher’s people strategy when he took over Southwest Airlines. Herb wanted to create an environment where people had fun with customers. He wanted to hire people with a great sense of humor and quickly implemented recruitment strategies to do this. Quicken and ING are both popular brands that also claim to hire for attitude and train for skills.

I would argue though that even these companies have not implemented a uniform the board hire for attitude strategy. You still must have a pilot certificate to obtain a pilot job at Southwest. They even prefer people who have at least 500 hours of fixed-wing turbine aircraft experience. To work as a maintenance technician at Southwest, you must have at least 2 years of experience working with aircraft maintenance.

In my experience, companies who do hire for attitude and train skills (to any degree) often are very structured and established organizations. I’ll share with you in a little bit another example about Better.com which created a training program for underwriters with no skills. During this time, they had a full-blown enablement team with over 30 trainers and a learning and development department on top of that.

Are Some Roles Better Suited to Hiring for Attitude

As you can see from the Southwest example earlier, some jobs are less suited for hiring for attitude as a primary determination. You wouldn’t want a doctor with a sense of humor and no surgical experience operating on you. Similarly, you wouldn’t want someone maintaining the aircraft you fly on with no aircraft maintenance experience. This is why residency exists for doctors and apprenticeships exist for technicians in many fields.

But for roles such as customer service, cabin attendants, or even sales, hiring for attitude may be easier to pull off.

Why Companies Choose to Hire for Attitude and Train Skills

Economic Factors

Better.com, the online mortgage company that went public in 2023, adopted a hire for attitude and train for skills during the refi boom of 2020. Underwriters were hard to come by because everyone was employed but they needed more of them to keep up with demand. The solution was the creation of Better University and a policy of hiring for attitude (or aptitude may be a better word).

Economic factors can push companies to take a hire for attitude and train for skills stance in their recruitment practices.

Jobs That Index for Traits

Some jobs index for traits in their recruitment process because they are indicators of success. Many customer-facing jobs that don’t require a high degree of technical expertise may fall into this category. Jobs such as customer service, sales, or retail may have an easier time hiring for attitude over skills.

I spoke with one retail manager from Trader Joe’s last week who mentioned they put a high value on individuals who are enthusiastic. If you’ve ever shopped at Trader Joe’s you can feel the culture in every interaction with an employee. They’re always trying to make your day better. They’re very social and fun to be around.

Managers Who Want to Break the Mold

When I was hired for my first recruitment sales job, I had no recruitment experience. The new VP who hired me wanted to hire new people who thought differently and didn’t have industry thinking. The result? I ended up opening a new vertical for the company. I targeted accounts that others never thought about because that wasn’t what they typically did.

It proved quite successful and launched my career. But all of that was because I wasn’t an industry veteran and I didn’t have group think.

Later as a Director of Recruitment, I too hired people for both sales and recruitment roles who had no previous experience. I hired a TV producer for a Director of Sales job and an Accounting Manager for a recruitment role. Both of them turned out to be top performers.

Why Don’t More Companies Hire for Attitude and Train for Skills

They’re Busy

I’ve recruited for hundreds of companies and one thing most of them have in common is that they are busy. In many cases, that is why a new opening exists. They’ve outgrown their current resources and need to add headcount to keep up with demand.

Busy teams don’t have the time to train. They will train some things such as how to use their software or what their process looks like, but they are expecting you to have a baseline of skills. Your attitude may help you get the job, but they’re not going to hire you based solely on your sense of humor.

Companies that are experiencing rapid growth need people who can jump in and perform. Unless they have a structured training team, they will be too busy to train you.

They Don’t Have the Skills

While being busy probably accounts for the majority of all the hires I’ve made in my career, a lack of skills is probably the second biggest reason. Remember, companies hire people to solve problems. Earlier the problem was not enough people to keep up.

But in some cases, they don’t have anyone on the team who can train you. They are hiring someone because they need you to train them. That is their problem. It could be a start-up, a new division opening, or a new product launch that is happening.

But if they’re hiring someone to help them set something like this up, there is no one to train you. Even if they wanted to hire you for attitude, they simply cannot train you the skills because no one has them yet.

Attitude Fraud

If you’ve ever dated for an extended amount of time, you too have probably experienced attitude fraud. You go on a first date, it lasts an hour, and you think what a wonderful person that is. But by the time you’ve been dating for 3 months, you realize you were a victim of attitude fraud.

Attitude is easy to fake, especially in a 30-minute interview. In fact, I would even argue it’s widespread in the recruitment process. Skills on the other hand aren’t as easy to fake. If I set you in front of my computer and ask you to build me a pivot table, you can either do it or you can’t.

It’s Expensive

I’ve heard all the stories about how hiring for attitude and training for skills can reduce turnover, lead to increased productivity, and create agile organizations. I read this and hear this a lot, but I’ve found zero scientific evidence to back up these claims. The truth is there is no direct correlation between prioritizing attitude and these benefits.

With that said, it takes a tremendous amount of planning, time, money, resources, and energy to create a training program effective enough to develop new hires with minimal technical skills.

With workers switching jobs more often on average each year (Pew Research Center), it’s not worth the investment for some organizations.

Compliance

Some jobs are highly technical and require certifications, licenses, and other qualifications. And for good reason. Can you imagine a Radiologic Technologist who isn’t registered by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists or who isn’t certified in CPR?

Many jobs simply can’t practically hire for attitude and train skills.

What Does This All Mean For Your Job Search

Realistically, attitude will matter, but so will your skills. In most situations, your skills will matter more than your attitude. You’re going to need some baseline set of skills to obtain most jobs.

I like to think of it this way. Your skills will get you to the final stages of interviewing. Your attitude may get you the job offer.

Target the Right Companies

If you have limited skills and experience and want to make a career change, you need to target companies that have the infrastructure and ability to train. Don’t waste your time on companies that don’t. They won’t give you the time of day and you are literally wasting your time.

These companies tend to be larger corporations, but it’s not exclusive to company size. Any well-structured, organized company could train new hires.

While I don’t know of a foolproof way to target these companies, one way that can help is to identify if they have a training team. Search for people who work at the company on LinkedIn. They may not have the title of trainer. Job titles could also be in enablement or learning and development. If they have teams of these people, chances are better that they have the infrastructure to train you.

If they have the infrastructure, then it’s more likely they’ll be open to hiring you with fewer skills.

Upskilling Programs Are Your Friend

More and more companies are turning to programs like Aspireship to train new hires for them. Companies like this may also work with yoru local Employment Development office and exist to upskill and train people for new careers.

Many people think of these for the trades, but they exist everywhere. Aspireship for example trains people wanting to find a job in SaaS sales, customer success, revenue operations, and software engineering. For a small fee, you get trained and then placed at a company that hires from these organizations. Some programs even reimburse you for the fee once you are hired.

Hire For Attitude Train For Skill Conclusion

While many companies will hire for attitude, they don’t do it at the expense of skills. Skills and experience are usually prioritized above attitude in the initial vetting stages.

There are companies who will hire you for attitude and train you. Economic factors, the job title itself, and the manager’s needs affect whether a company will hire for attitude and train skills.

Many companies don’t practice this because they’re a) too busy to train someone, b) they don’t have anyone with the skills to train you, or c) don’t have the money to build the infrastructure necessary to train you.

If you’re making a career change, target companies that have a training infrastructure already in place. They are more likely to hire for attitude and train for skill.

Making a career change can be easier with the help of upskilling programs as well.

Hire for Attitude Train for Skill, Recommended Reading

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Adult Internships and Apprenticeships for Career Changers

How to Get a Job As a Data Analyst With No Experience

Cole Sperry has been a recruiter and resume writer since 2015, working with tens of thousands of job seekers, and hundreds of employers. Today Cole runs a boutique advisory firm consulting with dozens of recruiting firms, oversees Optim’s Resume Revision Service and Interview Prep Service, and is the Managing Editor at OptimCareers.com.