Who should one hire? The soldier or the assassin?

Psychometric assessment may help in taking decisions about the right hire.

“Hire character, train skill”. These are the words of Peter Schutz, former CEO of Porsche. It is often the topic of debate within human resource management circles, and for all the right reasons. What qualities do you look for in a fresher you are about to hire?

What is that one quality you can’t do without when you make the decision to recruit a new candidate? Is it the ability to write perfect bug-free codes? Or is it the capacity to solve algorithms at a breakneck speed? Or would you rather go for the gift of convincing people to buy your product without having second thoughts?

Would you prefer the ability to learn; to absorb every skill that you need him to acquire? Would you look for a passion to work towards the end-goal of the company? What are the pre-requisites? Often, the character and culture of the candidate go a long way in deciding the suitability of a hire for a particular company.

Personality, demeanour, creativity, experience, adaptability and the ability to learn are metrics you can’t change in a recruit. So how do you measure them? How do you objectify these traits into actionable figures which you can use for hiring?

Psychometric assessment is the key to that question. The candidate might have the perfect skill set for a company, but his values and ethics might not be in tandem with the culture of the business.

Personality, demeanour, creativity, experience, adaptability and the ability to learn are metrics you can’t change in a recruit. So how do you measure them? How do you objectify these traits into actionable figures which you can use for hiring?

There are two types of fresh graduates applying for a job.

Those who have their focus entirely on completing their degrees and acquiring the skills required for the profession they want to be associated with;

And those who use their time while studying to work in various places and gain a first-hand experience of the corporate world

The approach of the each type of candidates will be significantly different from that of the other. Which one would you prefer while hiring? The one who already has some experience in the field or the one with the technical know-how to tackle problems but without any idea of the culture and workflow of a corporate environment? Preliminary assessments go a long way in helping take this decision.

Remember, a gap in skills can be filled with training, but attitude is something you can never imbibe in someone. One either has it, or one doesn’t. It is beneficial to hire people with the right mindset and train them to acquire proper skills to be of additional value to the company. In Warren Buffet’s words, “in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”

(The author is a member of the product marketing team at Mettl, one of India’s fastest growing assessment platforms and skill measurement company. Along with writing articles for HR, Debarshi has a tendency to tinker with gadgets in his free time and is also vocal about his love for Android.)

(An HR Industry Promotional Initiative)