Nigel Brewster
Brewster McBride Recruitment Consultants
Ask the Expert: Employee mindsets
Nigel Brewster, managing director of Brewster McBride Recruitment Consultants, explains that choosing the right managers is more than just matching skills
Q: We are about to embark on a project to recruit three key members of middle management on our organisation but one of my colleagues has suggested that we need to get the right ‘mindset’ rather than ‘skillset’. How do we ensure we get both?
We all know how important it is to make sure you have got the right ‘skillset’ in a potential employee. But in recent years this concept has become slightly more confusing with the arrival of the debate among career experts about which is more important: ‘skillset’ or ‘mindset’.
So, what do we mean by mindset? Well, an employee’s mindset typically covers areas such as attitude, integrity, work ethic, personality, etc.
While skills are certainly desirable for many positions, just having the right skills nowadays doesn’t always guarantee that you will get the job. For most jobs it is a pretty obvious point but an applicant’s skillset needs to come first. Let’s be honest, as an employer, you usually want to be sure that the person can actually do whatever it is they will be asked to do.
However, in a market where the supply of candidates is greater than the demand for their services (like the one we find ourselves in at the moment with ever increasing numbers of unemployed) once employers have satisfied themselves about an applicant’s ability do the job (their skills) the employer will often differentiate between potential candidates by shifting their focus to their candidates’ mindsets.
Businesses and hiring managers give differing answers when asked whether when looking to recruit they would go for the person with the perfect skills and qualifications, but lacking the desired mindset, or the person with the desired mindset, but lacking the rest? Interestingly enough our experience shows that there is growing consensus that it is more likely that a person with the right mindset will develop the right skillset, rather than the other way around.
Let’s be clear here… we are not saying that the right attitude will get you the right job over someone else with relevant experience. But, what we are saying is that in our opinion, the key to success in the jobs market is a candidate’s ability to demonstrate skills and experience relevant of those required for the technical elements of the job combined with the attitude, work ethic and general personality required to fit into the culture of the organisation.
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About Nigel
Contact Details
Nigel Brewster
Managing Director,
Brewster McBride Recruitment Consultants
nigelbrewster@bmcb.co.uk
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