When Hiring, What Are the Most Import Attributes to Look For?

Several years ago, two well respected organisational psychologists, Bartram and Lindley, conducted a survey of managers (n=875) and graduate students (n=150). The purpose was to measure the attributes these people considered the most important when it comes to selecting new employees or applying for a new position - what attributes do these managers/graduates see as critical “must haves” to be successful in the role?

The most important attributes in un-weighted rank order were:

Honesty and Integrity – This is about trustworthiness, ethics, and adherence to general society values in relation to the work environment.

Motivation and Drive – What motivates them? Money, learning new things, affiliation, etc

Interest in work – Do their interests “fit” the job? Are they interested in working with people, data, ideas or things?

Conscientiousness – It’s about focus, organization, ambition and striving for perfection

This was followed by 8 “fairly important” attributes:

1. General personality – In my opinion this is too wide, but is a proven predictor of job success – specific personality characteristics that “fit” to role would be more valuable. Many facets of one’s personality are a key driver of job success. Think about sales; if a person doesn’t have optimism, resilience, assertiveness, motivation to influence etc, no amount of sales training will make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!
2. General ability - This relates to problem solving and learning ability – how quickly do they “get it”?
3. General health – Often labelled as physical ability. If the job requires lifting weighty items, does the person have a bad back? Are you hiring a hypochondriac?
4. Trainability – This is correlated with general ability. Candidates who score well in cognitive ability tests are general more trainable.
5. Job-related experience – Do they have the skills and experience required for this role?
6. Vocational qualifications – Do they have the knowledge required for the job? Industry specific training and recognised qualifications etc.
7. Academic qualification – The appropriate education? This correlates with 2 and 4. It can be a precursor to drive the ability to solve problems.
8. Physical appearance – I have a big problem with this one. I think they are referring to general presentation, dress, tidiness etc. However, attractiveness is a powerful persuader and the most biased selection tests. One could argue that for certain roles this may be a prerequisite – say a fashion model.

The above highlights the high degree of importance placed on the need to recruit people who exhibit honesty and integrity, are conscientious, have personality traits that “fit” the job and have the mental capacity to learn and problem solve.

Most hiring managers evaluate these attributes on gut feel – just because a candidate looks respectable, sounds organised and is outwardly going doesn’t mean he, or she, can do the job.

So what is the solution? Don’t use gut feel; you’re a fool if you believe you can “pick them when you see them”.  Honesty and integrity, motivation and interest, personality (attitudes) and general abilities (mental abilities) can easily be measured before you hire.

The use of highly validated psychometric tests, like PreVue can measure the Big Five personality characteristics, mental ability, motivation and interests all in one test and in one hour!  The cost of PreVue is under $200 - much less when you operate your own administration site. Would a hundred odd dollars be too much to pay to ensure you hire the right person? – one that “fits” your job position!

PreVue can also build instant “job fit benchmarks” enabling you to not only understand the “real” person, but to also align that person with the attributes required for your specific job – very powerful.

Are you about to hire? I’d like to offer you the opportunity to build a PreVue benchmark for the position you are hiring for. It will take about 15 minutes of your time to fill in our online job analysis survey. I will then email you back a report – no cost, no obligation.