Employees hiring more for personality than ever?

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The article is a reductionist, overgeneralization by a journalist, IMHO. What product is the company selling? If you're an "adventure cruise company," then toughness and ability to work with different people is important for the business. If you're uncomfortable sitting on a swing, you probably should not work for a playground company. To then say this criteria applies to typical aspie jobs -- like computers, accounting, statistics, academia, etc. -- is absurd. There are jobs (like mine) where the ability to concentrate and solve problems on your own (it saves the company time and, thus, money) is an asset. Sure, a couple of people I work with are good, outgoing people who try to engage me. I show my appreciation by being honest and never showing disrespect. I don't need to join the party. If I do, it diminishes the importance of the work. "Your brand is going to be a jerk"? What does that even mean?

I laugh at the citation of Whole Foods, Inc. First, the founder of the darn company engaged in blogging under false identities to discredit a rival and manipulate stock. It's cited as one of the most unethical and bizarre episodes in business. He's under investigation. Would this company hire their own founder under their process? Second, I worked for Whole Foods on a temp job for one day. That's all I lasted. Want to know why? The guy who I was hired to help was never around to give me any work or directions. He disappeared for hours. He was curt, unhelpful, not nice, and certainly not a team player. Unless he saved that for the people who were directly hired by the company instead of the temps!

There is a nice (younger, about 24) guy on my current job. Sure, he gets along with everyone better than me. Yet I was just informed that I will be getting a raise at the end of the year and not him. No amount of personality can save his screw-ups. It saves his job because he is seen as a good-hearted knucklehead, but I doubt he would be re-hired now if they had known about his complete inability to pay attention or produce. Sorry, productivity in business is still numero uno. Given the "laws" of capitalism, it always increases profits. And, given the right job, we kick butt in the productivity department.

I still think that you're under-estimating the importance of getting along with your boss. You might be a very talented, smart person, but if there's something about you that's annoying your boss (aka you're extremely dissimilar to him), like not liking football (when he's an avid football fan), liking to work later in the day (when he's an early bird), or having a foreign accent (which annoys many people in the U.S.). I agree that in the more technical fields, having a fun personality isn't enough to get you ahead, but the likability factor is still there. I am a psych major and I remember one of the professors once told us "you know what's the best way to get a job that you aren't qualified for? Be as similar as possible to your future boss." Even in academia, I've known some extremely smart and talented people who failed because they didn't get along with their advisors.

Yes, I actually just recently "failed" one of those "personality surveys" for a crap job. The website said my application was terminated after I finished answering their questions (mostly involving dealing with co-workers). This stuff is BS.

Here is a question that I am going to pose:

Two candidates apply for job--Candidate A and B--and are invited to come in and interview.

Candidate A has the perfect resume, 4.0 GPA, well-regarded in his field, is published, has given conferences, but has horrible social skills. He comes off as awkward and abrasive during the interview and the people don't like him.

Candidate B has an above average, though not perfectly resume. He has a 3.3 GPA, isn't published in his field, and hasn't given conferences. He's not as well-qualified as Candidate A, but he gets along with the staff who interview him. He shows that he is willing to be "part of the team" and that he is "a team player."

Who gets hired?

(Hint: It's not going to be Candidate A).

Companies hire employees who will fit in their corporate culture, effectively complete the work that they need to do, work well in a team, and make positive contributions. By the time that you are invited in for an interview you have already won the qualifications debate. That is, for example, for an average position, you might have 30 applications. Maybe 10 come for a first interview and then maybe 3-5 for the second interview. By then you've already convinced them that you are qualified.

At a job interview they are looking for someone who, not only has the qualifications or some of the qualifications, but someone who will fit in their team and corporate culture. Most firings occur because employees didn't get along with their coworkers. Very few firings occur because of actionable offenses--like violence, sexual harassment, racial harassment, and poor performance. A company normally fires or "lays off" an employee when it is clear that s/he isn't fitting in their corporate culture and not fitting in as a team member.

So the reality is that these types of tests are not going to go away. In fact many employers will probably adapt them more. They don't want to hire someone who isn't going to fit or get along with their staff. They don't want someone who doesn't share their values. Now I know that these tests may not be the best measure of someone's ability to "fit in", but they will be part of the future.

Work is about "getting along with others". Even in "Aspie jobs", especially academic, social skills are important. In academia there are rivalries between faculty and administrators. So yes personality does play a role. Even in the most nonpeople-skilled professions it plays a role.

I'lll be straight up. If I were interviewing candidates for a job I would not only look at qualifications, but personality as well. I would want to hire someone with whom I can get along. And so my advice is to work on people skills--or at least show them enough during an interview to be hired.

If you are failing multiple written personality tests, your suspect. If you fail once or twice, ok. If more, then you are too lazy to research how to answer the questions properly. There are plenty of boks to read on the topic such that you can pass the personality test for a salesman at one company, a manager at another, a programmer at another, etc...

I do sympathize with one thing, what kind of work environment are you going to have if no one on your team communicates and every single person is socially inept? I would not want to manage a team of people like that! The only way is if there is no communication needed among team members.

I'm going for a 100% based personality interview on Monday at Blockbuster Video...we'll just have to see how that goes since I am Candidate A (literally) in the example a few posts up: not abrasive just very, very awkward.

Gee, so much for the seperation of business and pleasure and having your own personal life.

Personality nazi's give me the creeps.