ARTICLES

There is an ongoing debate in hiring about whether behaviour or technical capability should be weighted more heavily. Most hiring processes answer this question implicitly by spending the majority of their assessment time on skills and the minority on values, judgment and interpersonal integrity.

The argument for reversing that emphasis is not idealistic. It is practical.

Skills can be developed. The technical gap between a candidate who is a strong hire and one who is an excellent hire can, in many roles, be closed through training, mentoring and experience within the business. The behaviour gap — between someone who operates with genuine integrity and someone who does not — is far more resistant to change. You can teach someone a process. You cannot easily teach them to be honest when it is inconvenient, to take accountability for failure or to treat people with consistent respect regardless of their seniority or usefulness.

This does not mean ignoring technical capability. It means being rigorous about both — and being honest about which of the two a business is typically better at assessing.

Most hiring processes are designed to assess what is most easily assessed. Work samples, technical exercises and competency interviews are well-established. Probing for genuine behaviour — how someone makes decisions under pressure, how they handle situations where the ethical path is harder than the easy one, how they treat people who have no power over them — requires more deliberate interview design and greater interviewer skill.

The businesses that hire for behaviour as seriously as they hire for capability have significantly lower rates of the kind of cultural damage that most businesses spend disproportionate leadership energy managing.

If you want practical support reviewing your workplace policies, contracts, leadership capability, or workplace culture, Blue Kite HR Consulting can help you take a proactive approach before issues become bigger problems.