SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 160,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: When interviewing job candidates, what’s more important to you in making your selection?
- I place equal emphasis on the balance between skills and values/background: 75.29%
- I value their background and values more than anything else: 19.3%
- I value their skills more than anything else: 5.41%
Balance matters. Clearly skills are important, but the emphasis on a candidate’s background and values trumps any skills interviewers are looking for. This seems pretty obvious given that skills can be taught in a relatively short period of time compared to the values a candidate grew up with. Bob Herbold, former COO at Microsoft, has offered a revealing and simple way to dig into a candidate’s values and background — all you have to do is ask one line of questioning related to who influenced the candidate the most while growing up. The answers to that line of questioning should reveal the core of his or her character.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper.”
