Hiring: Experience & Technical Qualification Vs. Personality and Potential

Guests: Kemal Brown, Founder & CEO, Digita Global Javette Nixon, Founder & CEO, Point Global Marketing Welcome to Your Business Matters, a podcast of EXIM Bank Jamaica where we bring thought leaders together on thought-provoking ideas and methods to help grow your business. Hiring new employees can be daunting. As a result, employers usually make it easy on themselves by eliminating candidates with resumes who don't demonstrate a certain level of experience. Personality and interpersonal skills usually come into play at the time of the interview, if at all. When it comes to hiring employees, Business Daily states that much of it comes down to personality, but is that more heavily weighted than the employee’s skills? Many employers state that an employee who possesses both skills and personality is a rare find, one is usually more prominent than the other. Virgin's Richard Branson in a post on LinkedIn stated "personality always wins over book smarts. Company knowledge and job-specific skills can be learned but you can't train a personality. Time and time again I've seen people with a background of broad-ranging employment and skills hired for a job where they don't necessarily tick the specialist criteria boxes, but become incredibly successful by offering a new level of understanding to the role. With this in mind, we focus on hiring people with transferable skills--team players who can pitch in and help others in all sorts of situations. It's important never to underestimate the power of versatility." This week, we are joined by Javette Nixon, founder, and CEO of Point Global Marketing, and Kamal Brown CEO and Founder of Digital Global to dissect the topic ‘Hiring: Experience & Technical Qualification Vs. Personality and Potential’’ Some of what we discussed includes: What is your thought process during the eliminating stage to select your top 5 persons for an interview? Why is personality important for you versus qualifications and skills? Is academic qualifications an indication of personality? How do you mitigate against the downside of personality testing? We also touched base with a member of our audience Ruth Taylor who posed the question “When you have two candidates with similar personality and experience what is your deciding factor?” Connect with our guests: Connect with Digita Global at @itsdigita on Instagram or email [email protected]  for products and services available to you  on all social media platforms and visit @pointgm on Instagram or email [email protected] Thank you for joining us on Your Business Matters hosted by Heneka Watkis-Porter of the Entrepreneurial You podcast. Remember to join us next week for another exciting episode with our thought-provoking leaders as they debate thought-provoking ideas and methods to help grow your business and move closer to your goals. To stay in touch, you can connect with us on your favorite podcast platforms at ‘Your Business Matters’ where we bring the matters to the table, or visit eximbankja.com for further information and business resources. As you continue to mind your business, I leave with you this quote from Michelle Obama “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.’’ Take care.