Hire, pay and let go 10 of 16 in this group
SOP 192
Hire for the smallest skill gap
What this page is for. Use it when you are choosing between two people for one role and each is short of something: one has the attitude you want and not the skills, the other has the skills and not the attitude. It carries the usual advice and why the answer offered is that the role decides, the rule offered for choosing, a case from each end, where low-skill and high-skill roles fall, and the idea that attitude can be trained once you see it as a set of behaviors. The method this idea sits beside, for finding the one thing that holds a business back, is SOP 184 — Find the one constraint with six questions.
SOP-192-Hire-for-the-smallest-skill-gap.md
1. Two candidates, one role
Say you are looking at two potential hires. The first has a great attitude and does not have the best skills. The second does not have the best attitude, but has the skills. This is called super important for many owners who have employees, or who would like to have them at some point in the future.
It is the classic contest of attitude against aptitude. You have probably heard the line that goes with it: hire for attitude, then train aptitude, or something to that degree.
So which of the two would you hire? The answer offered: it depends on the nature of the role.
2. The rule for choosing
The rule is called the single golden truth: of the two people, hire the one whose missing piece would take you less time to teach, whether that piece is the attitude or the aptitude. The two cases that follow show it from each end.
3. When the skill takes a day to teach
One practice here: if the aptitude you would have to teach takes a day, the hire goes to attitude, for sure. The reason offered: teaching someone to be kind, to be respectful, to smile, to be nice and so on would take years, because each of those is a chunked-up term with many, many skills beneath it.
Set them side by side. The skill could be taught in a day; the attitude would take years. So the years are not the thing to take on, and the choice lands on attitude: the smaller gap.
4. When the skill takes years
Now flip it. Say you are trying to hire the foremost researcher in artificial intelligence. One candidate is a bit odd, keeps to himself, and has something of an attitude problem, but really knows the field. The other does not know the field that well, but is a really great person. Who do you hire?
Again, it depends on the role. In this one, it would cost far more time to teach a pleasant, hard-working person how to do the research than to get the expert to smile now and then and to stop calling the people around him names. So here the choice lands on aptitude.
The view here is that this is fundamentally the preferred way to approach hiring for a specific role: it is put as a preference.
5. Where the role falls
| The role | What matters more, as stated here |
|---|---|
| What is considered, in the view here, a low-skilled role | Attitude over aptitude, absolutely, for sure. The reason offered is that there are so many more skills on the attitude side (section 3) |
| A role that needs more skill and more aptitude | The more a role requires, the more the aptitude will matter |
6. Attitude can be trained
You will start, it is said, to learn how to train attitude, because you come to see it as just a bucket of behaviors. The questions behind it:
- What are the things that make it more likely that people do not complain about you?
- What are the things that make it more likely that people like you?
The finding offered is that there are only something like six or seven things a person has to do consistently, in a work setting, to make it less likely that people can complain about them. So learn how to train those consistently.
What that opens up. Once you can train them, your aperture widens: you can take on more of the people who are really good at the work but are not that good with people.
7. Where this sits
- Whether to hire a skill in ready-made or grow it inside, and the interview test for a senior hire: SOP 44 — Buy or build talent.
- A related case in entry-level lead-generating jobs, where the trait under the work is said sometimes to take longer to train than the skill: SOP 43 — Document, demonstrate, duplicate, section 5.
- The kinds of fit checked when hiring for higher-level roles: SOP 163 — Head-hunt and interview for higher-level roles.
8. What this page does not decide for you
- Which six or seven behaviors. Not established on this page.
- Where a role stops being low-skilled. This page gives no figure for the line between a low-skilled and a high-skilled role.
- How to train the behaviors. Not established on this page.
- What aptitude matters more than, in a high-skill role. Not established on this page.
9. The checklist
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Name what each candidate is short of: the attitude or the aptitude |
| 2 | Ask how long each gap would take you to teach: a day, or years |
| 3 | Hire the one whose gap is quicker to teach; the role decides which that is |
| 4 | For what is considered a low-skilled role, attitude over aptitude; the more skill a role needs, the more aptitude matters |
| 5 | Learn the behaviors that keep people from complaining about someone, and train them consistently |
10. What this page does not cover
Interview questions, pay and employment law are not covered on this page.
Terms defined on this page
- Attitude versus aptitude
- The old hiring contest between the candidate with the right attitude and the one with the right skills. The answer is that it depends on the role; for a low-skill role, attitude wins.
- Smallest skill gap
- Hire the person whose missing piece, attitude or aptitude, would take less time to teach. For a low-skill role that usually favors attitude; aptitude matters more as the skill a role needs goes up.