☄️ Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill

Every leader has been in this position:

Brilliant resume. Stellar references. Aced every technical question. You make the hire.

But then, somehow, they turn every meeting into a battlefield and every project into a nightmare.

Here's what went wrong: you hired for skill and hoped attitude would follow.

Herb Kelleher, co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, put it best: "We can teach you the business, but we can't teach you to have a good attitude."

There’s a reason why Southwest Airlines stayed profitable for 45 consecutive years while keeping voluntary turnover at just 4.4% after taking the opposite approach.

And there’s a reason why Zappos built a billion-dollar business with 2.5% turnover using the same philosophy.

Hiring for attitude means recognizing that skills can be trained, but core character traits rarely change. But (and it’s a big but) if you have ever hired then you know hiring for attitude is not easy at all.

Really getting to the core of who a person is in a structured interview process is just plain hard.

That’s why, this week, I studied 4 leaders who have cracked this code:

4 Lessons from Leaders Who Hire for Attitude

Tony Hsieh (Zappos)

His revolutionary dual interview system gave equal weight to job fit and cultural alignment.

Either interviewer could veto regardless of technical qualifications.

Tony recognized that cultural misalignment would eventually undermine any technical competence.

Richard Branson (Virgin Group)

He runs the "Island Test" during interviews (the “airport test” but for billionaires that own islands I guess”):

"Would you want to be stranded on a desert island with this person?"

When you think deeply about that question, you realize what you like and dislike about a person’s character.

Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines)

Herb used group interviews complete with improv exercises to observe how candidates handled humor and stress.

He offered a $2,000 "quit-now" bonuses during training to filter out cultural misfits.

This led to 85% of employees saying they were actively proud to work for Southwest, up and down the company.

Horst Schulze (Ritz-Carlton)

In the hospitality business someone who cares vs. someone who does not can make you lose customers for life.

That’s why Horst looked for patterns that showed people genuine cared, rather than performative answers.

His interviews focused on “purpose over function” and past examples of candidates going above and beyond to help others. This helped him achieve 20% turnover versus the hospitality industry's 80% average.

4 Ways to Implement

When you go deeper into the philosophies of these leaders, there are some actionable similarities:

• Define attitude concretely. Translate vague concepts like "good attitude" into specific traits you can keep an eye on like their adaptability under stress and alignment with cultural values.

• Redesign your interview process. Create scenarios that reveal character and cultural fit rather than just competence. Consider a dual interview system where both have veto power, like Zappos.

• Build systematic skill development programs so that you can close inevitable skill gaps. Start this from Day 1 with 30/60/90 day checkins. Southwest spends 7% of its payroll on development. Zappos includes 4 weeks of cultural immersion before technical training even begins.

• Establish clear accountability with graceful exits. When you’re prioritizing attitude in the hiring process, there may be cases where the skill gap is too large and you need to let people go gracefully. Set explicit performance expectations and create constructive processes to handle these cases.

A Final Flag

Just because someone has a good attitude doesn’t mean you should give them a job they’re not qualified for.

And famed “CEO whisperer” and executive coach Cameron Herold argues that "attitude can't compensate for skill deficits [in highly technical fields like aerospace engineering or AI].”

Adopt a balanced approach: roughly 60% attitude and 40% skill fit. The people you end up hiring will be the ones who help reinforce your culture while also getting the job done.

Until next week,

David Lobo

Head of Growth, Workmate

P.S. Curious about your hiring wins and failures? Reply with your biggest attitude vs. skill hiring lesson — I might feature it in next week's newsletter.

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