Hiring new employees can be a challenge for HR departments and hiring committees. Especially in Southern California, where a variety of industries and an even larger variety of people call home, finding a job that fits with a job seeker’s abilities and personality can be a difficult task.
Depending on the industry, the numerous components of a job which a candidate must be able to fulfill makes companies look to the resume before they look at the person. While this is understandable, especially for highly regulated industries like science, engineering and the medical fields, it is a person that is being recruited into the company process and dynamic, not just their resume.
Carolyn D’Silva’s article, “Why You Should Hire For Personality, Not Just Experience,” makes an argument for recruiting a candidate for what their skills, talents and personality can do within a company instead of what their previous experience states on a resume. Well established and new employees alike have different values, mannerisms and habits. How will this potential employee fit into a company’s process? Will they fit into the workplace culture? Are they critical thinkers? Are their skills transferrable?
To aid companies in the hiring process, many recruitment and staffing agencies are employed to objectively evaluate candidates through interviews and assessments. This takes stress from the hiring company and ensures that whomever the staffing agency chooses has deemed the candidate will be a strong match. No matter what field or position a company hires for, the skills required to fulfill the goals can be learned, but personality to grow in a company cannot.