Worker personality may matter as much if not more than worker skills, according to survey results published Wednesday by Express Employment Professionals and The Harris Poll. In fact, 86% of the more than 1,000 U.S. hiring decision-makers surveyed said the right personality could outweigh a candidate’s skills gap, potentially pointing to the power of soft skills in the workplace.
Hiring managers typically assess personality through informal interactions, situational questions, behavioral interview questions and reference checks, survey results showed. Hiring managers and job seekers agreed that the traits with the highest value are reliability, honesty, adaptability, flexibility and self-motivation — skills that play a large role in the recent technological shifts taking place at work.
Per a TestGorilla report released last year, most employers surveyed said evaluating the whole candidate leads to better results; 78% of those surveyed said they’d hired a candidate with strong technical skills who ultimately did not fit well into the company due to a lack of soft skills.
“Every employee has an effect on the workplace beyond the responsibilities listed in a job description,” Bob Funk Jr., CEO, president and chairman of Express Employment International, said in a statement. “The right personality can build trust, make change easier to navigate and raise the standard for how a team works together. That is why employers see personality as more than a hiring advantage. It is representative of the business culture.”
Work ethic and willingness to learn are especially important to hiring managers, according to the Express Employment poll.
A Graduate Management Admission Council report released earlier this year also pointed to a rising employer need for workers with emotional intelligence, grit and management capabilities, especially in an era of artificial intelligence use at work.
