Question

In order to address the course learning objective. "...demonstrate your ability to develop an 'internal situation analysis'..."

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On Page 109 of the textbook, it discusses the idea, of Attracting Human Capital - "Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill".

• Can you see positives to this idea?
• Do you see any "down-sides" to this approach?
• What do you (personally) think of this idea?

Answer 1

In the recent times, it has been observed that the influence of culture in organization has grown higher very steadily. This means that organizations that were once notorious for tough interviews involving puzzles and mind bending problems (e.g. Google) are no longer following their usual hiring practice. They are focusing on getting the cultural fit rather than the people who exhibit high IQ as once was. This kind of supports the statement, “Hire for attitude, Train for skill”.

Even without being a psychologist we can easily distinguish between technical skill, IQ, and attitude of a person. We have often encountered people who have been extremely talented but poor team members and vice versa. Logically, it is true that technical skills and knowledge are something that can be trained comparatively quickly. However, attitude of a person is often more challenging to alter. This is why there is positive merit in this argument. If a person has a good attitude, he/she could be trained on the technical or skill front to match up to the others in the organization. This can push the employee towards being a model employee.

On the other hand if an employee has strong technical skill and poor attitude, there may be disturbances that will affect not only his/her individual performance but could hamper overall team performance as well. These are the positive points of the statement.

The downside to this approach is that there are times when a person cannot be trained on skills. This could be due to poor background in education or logical deductions. Nonetheless in such cases, the overall performance of the organization may suffer. A good person but poor performer is not always the right option for every organization.

I personally think that it is the right approach. A person with good attitude may not be good at his/her work at first. However, a good attitude will likely include the willingness to learn and to be sincere. As a result, even if the worst case situation happens where the employee is untrainable on skills, he/she can be placed in other departments/functions. Cultural fitment is extremely important.