Hiring Wisdom: Skills, Experience and Even Talent Are No Match for Attitude

Dec 21, 2015

This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.

The race to hire for either skills or experience is over. Today, it’s all about hiring attitude and talent.

So, what is the difference?

A skill is the ability to do a particular task, like the ability to drive a truck, design a building, or cut hair.
Experience hones those skills.
Talent is the ability to learn new skills and/or dramatically improve upon an existing skill set.
And, attitude is what makes people with talents and/or skills and/or experience extraordinary employees.

Every organization that is filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical people will always defeat the ones that merely have skills, experience, and talent.

In the race between “talent,” “attitude,” “skills,” and “experience,” my money’s on “attitude” every time.

This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.

This article is part of a series called Editor's Pick.

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