In finding corporate talents, skills are currently priced the most. Companies believe that people with the right skills are most useful to them, because it will lessen the cost of training and the new hire can right away begin to create an impact by jumping straight to projects. That is the reason why resumes prepared by Job Applicants during the hiring process are usually adorned with the highest skills and the significant experiences that the candidates are most proud of. Somehow, modern day companies have realized how this practice is flawed. Many companies of today are currently rebalancing the hiring process with a better and a more relevant criteria other than skill.

Hiring Managers and leaders are now leaning their hiring preference towards looking for candidates with the right attitude. Why? Well, here are five top reasons why companies should hire based on attitude and not skill:

1.They are up for Personal Growth

A person with a good attitude will always be leaning towards growth, not only in his or her career, but with personal growth as a whole. A person with a pro-growth mindset is important to a company, because this means that the person is curious, open to learning new things, and up for self-development. This is the kind of mindset future leaders of the team have. This is the mindset of people who enjoy their jobs and, therefore, are productive with it. This is the mindset of people who are like a ball of sunshine in the office, where they work happily on their seats while humming a song. In short, people with a pro-growth mindset leads a healthy working lifestyle. They are always moving forward and are determined to progress in everything that they do. Having talents like these in the company, who can be priced not only by their skills, but also of their working lifestyle, are valuable assets.

2.They follow Company Rules

Being in a company means working under the company’s rules and regulations. This is one of the most important factors why hiring a person with a good attitude matters. Company rules are sets of regulations agreed to by all of the people under the company. Not adhering to these rules will cause chaos and conflicts in the organization. Therefore, it is important to find talents that are not only able to perform their jobs well, but are also considerate and responsible enough to follow the rules of the company.

There have already been a lot of issues about employees not obeying company rules, or worse than that, employees cheating from company rules. A common issue of companies all over the world is related to employees not adhering to the Working Hours of the company. Apart from Japan, which is known for their punctuality, many companies from countries all over the world are experiencing issues on their employees´ tardiness. Worse, many of their employees cheat on their timecards. This issue is not just about tardiness. This is an issue on an employee´s morals, and a person’s morals can be reflected on his or her attitude. In this example, even the most basic operations of a company can be disrupted when people without the right attitude will be allowed to be part of the organization. This stresses how much the right attitude should be prioritized when hiring talents.

3.No Issues on Upskilling

Talents of a company are expected to skill up every once in a while. May it be with their technical skills, management skills, soft skills, or in their leadership skills. People with the right attitude will more likely take this as a positive challenge to hone themselves better. As stated in number 1 above, people with the right attitude are pro-growth. May it be improving their skills or learning a new skill set, they would embrace this kind of challenge with open arms.

While people with the right attitude would take this as a positive challenge, people with a twisted attitude would only treat this as a troublesome chore at work. Usually, people with a twisted attitude survive the day by just doing the bare minimum of their jobs. That is why they do not care about improving or acquiring new skills. It is quite clear that, if the goal is to have a progressive and passionate team, the key is to find people with the right attitude.

4.They are adaptable

Life in a company is fast-paced, and change is inevitable. With this, teams under the organization, as well as the talents under these teams, should be adaptable to changes. Adverse effects of change include risks on schedule delays, necessity for new skills, and all other changes and rollbacks that may happen to teams. In order for employees to not be turned down and burnt out by these stressful effects of change, they need to have the right attitude and be able to bounce back to shape when these inevitable issues happen. In the example of schedule delays, employees with the right attitude will be able to understand that they need to compromise and render some overtimes. In the case of necessities on skills, people with the right attitude will be open to learning these new skills that are required to do the job.

The capability of employees to adapt to the adverse effects of change is a priceless asset to the company because change is definitely constant. Therefore, it is important to have employees that understand the importance of adapting to change. For this, it is necessary to find people with the right attitude.

5.Good for Team Dynamics

When joining a company, an employee does not work alone. Employees work as a team. As a team, employees do work together, get over challenges together, and celebrate victories together. Therefore, it is necessary to put people who know how to get along with others despite diversity.

Attitude includes how a person interacts with others. It includes how a person deals with stress, how he handles conflict with others, how he handles other members, and how he professionally does his job. A person’s attitude is very important to make team dynamics work. If a difficult employee is mixed with excellent members in the team, it will still never work no matter how skilled that employee is. The team will still be constantly bombarded with personal issues and it will always affect the team´s output as well as the team’s morale.

The importance of skill is undeniable. A highly experienced employee with an in-demand skill provides a great upperhand to the company. It will lower the cost of training, because the training necessary will only be very little to none. Hiring a high-skilled employee would also mean that the outputs he will produce, even in his earliest days in the company would already be of high quality. Yes, all of these positive benefits are possible. However, if this highly experienced and skilled employee turns out to have a bad attitude, he or she will not only affect the training cost or the quality of the product in the company. There is a greater risk for him to affect the other basic but important foundations of company operations, such as the existing employees of the teams, company safety, and the likes. Therefore, it is always best to invest on people with the right attitude over people who are highly skilled. Yes, honing and nurturing them might require a little bit of patience and resources, but the reward will always be worth it.