ATTITUDE VS. EXPERIENCE: WHICH IS MORE VALUABLE?

A debate about hiring for attitude versus aptitude has developed over the years. Nearly every job posting includes the type of experience an employer is seeking, which makes sense considering that companies want to locate applicants who have already demonstrated a certain level of skill in that particular industry or role. 

Both the experience (hard skills) and the attitude (soft skills) are given high priority in the initial job requirements. The debate comes to light during the interview and hiring process.

Although the initial requirements highlight soft skills and personality traits as important parts of the job applicant’s qualifications, during interviews, many hiring managers focus on hard skills and experience because they are easier to discuss and judge. As a result, many applicants end up being hired based exclusively on their experience rather than on their attitude. Is it better to hire people on the basis of their experience or their potential? If we believe experience is preferable, and that age equates with experience, there’s no better time than now. But experience is not the issue. The question is, experience of what?

The problem of hiring on the basis of experience gained in a former job is the assumption that it parallels what is needed in the new job. Organisational cultures and situations can and do differ dramatically. There is a litany of highly competent executives like Bob Nardelli, who excelled at GE, but was unable to duplicate that success at Home Depot. Experience is situation-specific.

Experience vs Potential

Experience also tends to equate with baggage. Behaviour is learned. We do what we do on the basis of it having led to success in the past. We’ve all been annoyed by people who insist on telling us how things were done in their last company or last job. There are benefits to learning how other people do things, but the underlying message is that what we’re doing is no good, and that can be demoralising.

So what about hiring on potential? This, too, comes with some small print. “Potential”, may also get translated as “lack of directly applicable experience”. That means giving the individual time to learn, which implies training, coaching and the provision of development opportunities. This one of the reasons many companies fall back on what they hope is the quicker-fix solution of hiring so-called experienced people — it takes less effort.

There are a number of companies that have successfully hired for potential though, notably Southwest Airlines, the originator of the discount airline model. Southwest claims it hires for “attitude” — motivation, energy, keenness, and team spirit. But Southwest doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that’s enough. It follows up with intensive skills and culture training. People learn what behaviour is acceptable and rewarded. Very few organisations make a conscious effort to do this. Instead, people have to learn the hard way.

If we wish to hire people for their potential, we need to define the core competencies for the roles in question. These are things like a demonstrated ability to motivate people, being able to close sales, a record of building effective teams, or being able to make and stand by hard decisions. Either people have done these things or they haven’t. They can be tested and observed. Assessing potential doesn’t have to be subjective — it manifests itself in observable behaviour.

But as James Callaghan, a former British Prime Minister, once said: “Some people, however long their experience or strong their intellect, are temperamentally incapable of reaching firm decisions.” No amount of experience can change that.

What gets us Hired – Attitude or experience?

For recruiters, the longstanding question remains – who makes for a better hire – someone with the perfect experience, or someone with the right attitude?

A positive attitude can transform a workplace. Employers value a positive attitude because of the impact it can have. It’s important to remember that any role – no matter how big or small – gives an opportunity to make a positive impact through the way we work. Employers are looking for people who add to the culture. Workplace culture is important to employers, and the benefits we bring to the collective culture often matter more than our experience and qualifications. The good news is that means there’s more flexibility in how we present ourselves during a job search. If employers can’t imagine sitting beside us and working on a project, then it’s really hard to get hired. So if we don’t show our personality, then it’s difficult for them to choose us over somebody who’s got the same qualifications or experience.

Exhibiting a great attitude at Work

It’s not always easy to show employers how we think, but a great attitude can go a long way. Some ways in which we can show this are:

Knowing how to show our enthusiasm to employers can make a huge difference to whether we are considered for a role. A great attitude can help us stand out – even if we are up against others who may be more qualified or experienced.

Hiring for Attitude

Although it’s clear that attitude should play a major role in the hiring process, there may be some instances when skills and experience really are of utmost importance. In that case, we may want to consider hiring freelancers to design websites, or to create content or code, for example. Here are a few questions we can raise when determining whether attitude or skill set may be more important:

Although this isn’t a comprehensive list, these questions can help to determine what to evaluate during the hiring process. Certain ways in which we can evaluate job applicants’ attitudes during the hiring process may be:

A) Ascertaining what type of attitude is needed for the job. Different attitudes are better suited for particular roles and teams, so it’s important to clearly identify what type of employee attitude is needed for the specific position you are hiring for. For example, when hiring for a sales role, you might want an employee who is charismatic and doesn’t take no for an answer. However, this type of attitude may not be necessary for a graphic design role.

B) Posing questions that reveal attitude. It can be helpful to ask questions like, “Can you tell me about a time you failed?” But instead of focusing on the specific details of their failure, listen to how they frame their response. Do they take ownership of the failure and show a growth mentality, or do they blame others and speak bitterly?

C) Solicit Assistance from our Team. We can get a more holistic view of someone’s attitude by having multiple people assess it. For example, how did they treat the receptionist when they checked in? We can also give the candidate a tour of our office so they can meet other employees, or have select employees sit in on an interview, to assess whether the candidate is a good fit for the company culture.

D) Favouring Internal Promotions & Employee Referrals. It is easier to understand an employee’s attitude if they already work for you. Instead of taking a risk on a new hire, it may be helpful to promote from within your company. Employee referrals are also a great way to gather insight on candidates’ attitudes.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

OKRs: ITS USES AND IMPAIRMENTS IN VISIONING

We often wonder how successful companies continue to navigate and grow and know exactly what direction to go. The trick seems to be an almost irresponsibly aggressive approach to growing key objectives with a talented group of people.  OKR is an acronym for Objectives and Key Results —  a framework for visioning and setting goals within an organization that was popularized by Google.

Today, OKR is used at a seemingly broad variety of companies, from larger established firms like Anheuser-Busch and Deloitte to younger tech companies like Eventbrite and Twitter. Therefore, what are OKRs and how do they work, and — most importantly — do they work. Many leaders ask how they can align their team to the vision and set goals within their team.

What is OKR?

OKR is a goal-setting methodology originally developed by Andy Grove, former CEO and Chairman of Intel. In his book, High Output Management, he describes OKRs as being the answer to two questions:

We can expand the definitions of each part of the OKR to something like:

Objectives: Memorable, qualitative descriptions of what needs to be accomplished in a given timeframe. They may be ambitious and feel somewhat uncomfortable. They may also be short, inspirational, and public so everyone knows what everyone else is working on.

Key Results: A set of 2–5 metrics that measure progress towards the Objective. The focus must be on an outcome, not an activity (shouldn’t include words like “help”, “consult”, or “analyse”).

John Doerr, who learned OKR from Andy Grove while at Intel, was the one to teach and instil OKR at Google. He explains that the objective can be broad, aggressive, and even inspirational. But for the key results, the more specific, measurable, and verifiable, the better. Doerr recommends setting a limit of three to five OKRs per cycle, and that each objective should be tied to five or fewer key results.

OKR – An Example

Let’s say our business relies on giving a better customer experience than our competitors. So, our quarterly objective may be – to create an awesome customer experience. But how do we know if we are succeeding in doing this? What form of measurement shows we are creating an “awesome” customer experience?

Net Promoter Score (a tool that measures what people think of the brand) and customer churn rate (how many customers we are losing a month) may be some metrics. A great experience would mean people both say nice things about us and staying or coming back. By saying we want to improve our NPS score and lower churn, it sounds like we are willing to do whatever it takes to make our customers happy. But to run a sustainable business, we need to keep costs under control. Which is why we may add a third Key Result around cost as a countermeasure. Therefore, the sample OKR may be:

Example — YouTube

Suppose the goal is to increase the total usage time of Google products. The tricky part is finding the right metrics in which to progress. Understanding the business is key in being able to identify key growth nuances and folding those nuances into company objectives. Similar to Facebook, YouTube wants viewership, measured in minutes, to go up, because a fixed percentage of that viewership are advertisements. So as total time goes up, so do revenues.

In this case the Key Results may reveal part of the strategy to increase watch time. The first key result sets a numerical goal to hit for the objective. Having this number is crucial (and theoretically could be included in the objective itself) to score the outcome of this objective. Other examples of OKRs:

Why use OKRs?

At first brush, the appeal of OKR is obvious. It simplifies everything. By calling out objectives, you help your team identify and zero in on what matters most. With the key results, you create measurable benchmarks that help clarify what tangibly needs to happen, and likely hold folks accountable for those outcomes. And lastly, it’s probable that OKRs promote alignment and transparency across the team since everyone knows what each others’ OKRs would be.

Making OKRs Effective

There are nuances around how effective OKRs are in practice. John Doerr himself admitted that “goal setting isn’t bulletproof” and OKRs should not be blindly nor rigidly adopted. Some learnings from those who have used OKRS are:

Know why we are implementing them:- . . . For OKR to work, we have to have a deeper “why” for how OKRs might help you achieve that performance.

Focus on Crafting of Effective OKRs:- . . .

Separate OKRs from compensation — and try hard to separate it from performance reviews:- . . . Tying OKRs to compensation can cause employees to purposefully set lower goals in order to achieve them. Combining performance reviews with OKRs can be counterproductive since someone’s past performance is emphasised more than the binary result of whether the goal was achieved. This can be a challenge to achieve in practice.

Someone who hits their OKRs is going to look better than someone who totally fails to hit them. As a result, it’s important to consider the unintended negative consequences OKRs might have on your team’s performance.

Challenges of OKRs

Missing the big picture:- . . . When goals are too specific people can focus attention so narrowly that they overlook other important features of a task. For example, new ideas or feedback that are brought forward can often be ignored or seen as irrelevant, when in fact they are salient to the task at hand.

Optimizing for short-term, over long-term :- . . . Sometimes the narrowness of goals can come at a cost. It is easy to react to immediate outcomes and focus myopically on short-term gains and to lose sight of the potentially devastating long-term effects on the organization.

Dilution of focus:- . . . Research has shown that individuals are prone to focus only on one goal at a time. As a result, the OKR framework which recommends 3–5 objectives at a time, may prove to be distracting, since multiple goals are being pursued.

Shifting risk attitudes :- . . . Studies show how goals tend to increase risky behaviour. Depending on what domain we are in, this could be positive — but if we are in a negotiation situation, a higher propensity for risk can harm negotiation performance.

Promoting unethical behaviour: – . . . Goal setting can encourage cheating behaviour. For instance, one study found that “participants were more likely to misrepresent their performance level when they had a specific, challenging goal than when they did not.

Harmful to learning, cooperation, and intrinsic motivation:- . . . Goals can detract from our ability to learn and cooperate, as well as, our intrinsic motivation to do a task well. Narrow goals can inspire performance but prevent learning. Goals can foster a culture of competition that can be adverse to an organization.

Motives for Collapse of OKRs (Managerial Perspective)

Smaller teams and organizations tend to have faster rates of change, and so for them, it felt like more work to manage the framework to stay nimble as a team, than to simply execute on the work itself.

Concluding thoughts

The most salient feature of an OKR is the thinking it produces, i.e., focus on what matters most, and think about clearly how we know if we are going to get there. Whether that’s through the precise OKR framework — or not — is less important. Articulating a vision of the future is important, and providing support and guidance for what progress looks like is what matters.

The research is persuasive: Goals can do more harm than good, especially if overprescribed. At the same time, there is plenty of research that also shows the power of well-defined, thoughtfully instituted goals. More so, it is enlightening to know the range of negative consequences so that leaders can consider (a) if a goal-setting framework like OKR would work in our own team and (b) how in general to think about setting goals productively in our team.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa