Great Candidates Have Great Attitudes

Based on an article by James Adonis

Employee Engagement is a buzz word in HR circles, in SA it is challenging to find the perfect candidate, employee engagement is about retaining that talent.

James Adonis says that we should start with the recruitment process, we should be looking for employees that have the potential to become engaged. We have different sorts of employees in our companies, those who strive never to take a day of their sick leave and those that make sure they have used their full allocation, then we have those who are always willing and determined to exceed performance and those who scrape by on minimum standards, a scratch away from a negative performance appraisal.

The biggest mistake we make as employers is basing our recruitment decisions on qualifications and years of experience, we forget about attitude.

Skills can be taught, experience can be gained but you can’t teach the right attitude.

So when you are next in an interview situation, it is important to try and look for words that are used to express a good attitude. Below are some examples of words to look out for and possible questions to ask:

Learn – Discuss a situation that presented a challenging experience that you had no prior knowledge of.

Motivate – How do you work in a team that is mundane with repetitive tasks?

Natural – Do you remember a situation when someone needed help at work?

Optimistic – How do you behave if you find yourself in a negative and unfavourable environment?

Proactive – Give a few scenarios of when you have gone beyond the call of duty and why you did so.

The above facts, while they may appear minor, can have a massive impact on the outcome of your interview, so be sure to grab this tool out of your toolbox the next time you are conducting an interview.