Hiring for Attitude

by Mark Murphy

Build a high-performance workforce by abandoning skills-based hiring practices and focusing on employee attitude

Hiring for Attitude offers a groundbreaking approach to recruiting, assessing, and selecting people with both tremendous skills but, more importantly, an attitude that aligns with the organization’s culture.

Murphy cites his own company’s research and examines recent scientific studies about the practical effects a person’s attitude has on the outcome of his or her job performance. Clear and practical lessons are illuminated by numerous case studies of organizations like Microchip, Southwest Airlines, and The Ritz-Carlton.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Historical Romance, Leadership, Recruitment, Professional Development

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 11, 2011

Reviews

[Tõnu Vahtra · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best and most practical book I have read on hiring so far
Created mindmap during reading.

Main points
The attitudes that work in your organization are unique
Standard interview questions don't assess attitude
A few simple questions will reveal if someone's attitude is right for you
There's an answer key that will grade a candidate's attitude
The grammar that people use predicts whether they are a good or bad fit
The way most companies recruit chases away the best people
Hiring for Attitude will make your current employees better

Employee performance has two dimensions
Skill
Easy to measure
Attitude

You need to know which characteristics predict failure in your organization
In your experience, what separates our great attitude people from everyone else in the organization
Think of someone who represents the attitude
Think of someone who has the wrong attitude
People who are your role models VS the people who drive you nuts

"Fuzzy language disease" (not really saying anything)

Questions
What does it mean for you "to be there for the customer"?
Should you be the one to document meeting summaries?
Describe a situation where you got stuck
Describe a situation where you were requested to do something work related that you did not know how to do
How do you approach problems you don't know how to solve?
How do you act when you have to clean up after somebody?
There is a big difference between knowing and walking the path
How do you deal with failure?
How do you maximize your positive impact over time?
Could you tell me about a situation where you....
were given an assignment that really didn't fall within your role
your proudest accomplishment this year
where struggling to meet a commitment that was made

Good qualities
Proactively providing important information (also bad news) without bias
VS blaming others, making excuses, not cooperative, flying solo, overwhelmed by multiple demands
Willingness to take responsibility to learn new skills on the fly

High performers
Understanding
Caring
Persistence
Objectivity
Sincerety

There is no point of giving a test where everybody gets the same grade. - Pointless interview questions

Two types of people
Problem bringers
Problem solvers

One of the top reasons CEO's are fired is lack of excecution - too much talk and not enough execution

Glassdoor.com

Making of brown shorts questions
Pick one o brown shorts characteristics
Identiiy a differential situation to elicit brown shorts characteristics
Begin quotation "Could you tell me about a time when you..." - insert the situation
Leave the question hanging
Giving no clues if the answer should be positive or negative
It is most important to NOT say some things

Characteristics

Positive
Helping others without being asked
Constructive ideas
Personal responsibility
Taking ownership of problems
Self-directed learner
If they don't know how to do something, they actively find the information and resources they need

Negative
Focus on individual recognition
Ideas to anger others
Blaming others
Negative disposition
When faced with new situation, they regularly respond with why something will not work rather than try to figure out ways to achieve success
Identifying coachability
What was your boss name?
Tell me about ... as boss. (what he/she could had done more or less)
Could you have done or done differently to enhance your working relationship with ... ?
When I talk to ..., what will he/she tell me what your strenghts are?
All people have areas where they can improve so when I talk to ..., what will he or she tell me your main weaknesses are?
"I can't think of any"; people who can't hear and assimilate constructive criticism are not coachable

Brown shorts answer guidelines
Come from your employees: high and low performers

Grammar hints
High performers talk about themselves and what they did, low performers use 3rd person language (no examples)
Anwers from high performers use more past tense (have real experience) VS low perfomers use prsent and future tense (no experience)
Using active VS passive voice (The CEO is liked by Bob)
Positive VS negative emotions
Negation usage (no, neither)
Waffling (could be, maybe, perhaps), absolutes (always, never)

Dedicated employees
Don't make excuses or point fingers when something goes wrong
Work as long as neccessary every day to complete the day's projects
Generate at least 10 feasible ideas for improving efficiency every month
Solution to improve employee engagement is not elminating the "shove" but to offer a Tug - WRONG
Can you describe a time in the past few months when you felt demotivated, frustrated or emotionally burnt out?
...when you felt motivated
High performers should answer this question to identify shoves and tugs
Shoves
Being a high performer stinks
Boss can't tell the difference between high and middle performers
The bloom comes off the rose, the "10 year disengagement" spiral

Always start the first conversation with talking about the other person and his/her interests

Teaching employees about high performance
Word pictures
Needs work on accountability
Good work on accountability
Great work on accountability
Learning effect is maximized through positive and negative examples
Role models VS never acceptable

[Lucas Nessen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Usually after reading a self-help or management book, I come away with some exciting thoughts and good topics for discussion, but rarely with clear, practical actions I can apply at work. This book, however, left me inspired to share some of its ideas with my colleagues and help increase the number of high performers through better hiring practices and by actively supporting and nurturing high performers’ attitudes. I recommend reading!

[Thiago Marzagão · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty of hands-on advice about all steps of the process, from sourcing to interviewing to scoring the candidates. I'm hiring for my team right now and I regret that I didn't start this book before I began the hiring process. It gets anecdotal here and there (the "brown shorts" case is outright ridiculous), but overall I got a lot out of it.

[Lukasz Nalepa · Rating 5 out of 5]

That is a book that almost made it to my "to-read-again" bookshelf. I will get back to it for sure, but rather as a how-to guide when I'll be actively redoing the cultural fit interview parts of recruitment in my organisation (present and probably in the future as well).

This book is actually almost a step-by-step instruction on what to do, to start focusing on culture/attitude in your organisation, starting from discovering it (or parts of it), along with recruiting for it, and in the end also how to teach it to your current employees. Don't get me wrong though - it is not a compendium for the organisational culture as you have a lot of other books for that :)

This book focuses only on a particular aspects of culture, but does it really good, and is packed with actionable content.

Tho book - highly recommended read! :)

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

picked this one up due to a work assignment - put it down with some lessons learned. surprisingly actionable and realistic advice on hiring and the differentiation between high and low performers in the context of individual workspaces.

[Sarah Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, just what I was looking for with great examples and practical advice

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a senior leader in a school, I've wondered about, over the past two years, how we can better identify great potential employees in the hiring process while avoiding hiring toxic employees. Murphy's book offers the perfect solution to solve that problem. His brilliant strategies offer easily implementable ways to identify each workplace's unique necessary characteristics that make high quality employees successful as well as the qualities that will make employees unsuccessful there. The strategies he presents involve little cost, and I think will yield a huge amount of information to help a workplace better identify what makes it unique and what to look for in hiring and motivating high quality employees. There are many common sense strategies provided including ones on addressing how to evaluate employment candidates for qualities that fit one's unique business and how to train both new and existing employees on what poor and great implementation of the key values of the business look like (another major issue I've been pondering over the last two years). I'm excited to lead the way to develop and implement these strategies in our school. I am convinced the "Hiring for Attitude" strategies will yield huge results for us. For any other organizational leader who wants to improve hiring practices while training for and maintaining high quality employee standards in the workplace, this is absolutely a must-read book.

[Daniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is good learning tool for the beginners in the recruitment process. It gives a clear message that it is all about the attitude, character, approach, willigness to learn, personality. All the rest can be learned - skills.

[Elizabeth Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great beginners tool for hiring based on attitude. It helps to identify the questions that will differentiate good hires from bad hires for your specific company! It is especially great for small businesses who need to work closely together with one another.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas here, but not sure how I could adapt some of them to a library setting. I found some of his terminology a bit odd and distracting as well. Still - not a waste of time to read, in general, and helps inform my ideas about interview questions at the very least.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first book on HR and it got me pumped up!! All set to read more! Thanks to this book i now know how to handle myself better during and for interviews. :) Recommended to all HR professionals.

[Rod Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Attitude > skills, while you want someone with the skills necessary for the job, what makes someone exceptional is their attitude, personal attributes, and behavior. If ur stuck on island with someone who knows how to fish, but he’s toxic and nasty, he’s much less useful than someone with less skill but has a good attitude.

- Finding the right attitude for your organization will be individualized in each group. (Southwest Airlines values “fun” —> during interviews told pilots to wear brown shorts (instead of suit pants), if they refused they weren’t offered job - thus find your “brown shorts” way to determine who fits the aspired culture). Very imp to identify those who don’t fit culture bc either mismatch attitude or bad attitude.
- Performance = skill + attitude. Good attitude, bad skill = bless your heart (but still bad) vs bad attitude, good still = talented terror - hard to detect in interview but cause more problems than bless your heart. To determine good attitude - divide employees into 3 tiers - think about specific attributes that separate each tier and those that are top are you “brown shorts” attributes. Those at lowest are the “DNR” attributes.
- bad interview question types 1) tell me about yourself, strengths, weaknesses - vague, easy to rehearse answers, leads candidate answers 2) leading behavioral interview questions (ex tell me when you had to adapt, tell me about a conflict you had) - hard to differentiate good from bad candidates, question not specific, and leads the answer 3) hypothetical questions - not realistic 4) undifferentiating questions (random Qs that don’t differentiate good from bad) and these need to be linked to outcome I.e. this should tell you who is good versus bad with data (what do you do for fun, what’s favorite book, etc - this doesn’t differentiate people).
- Good interview practices/questions separate top and bottom performers and requires 1) knowing differentiating characteristics 2) identify scenario that reveals that characteristic 3) ask question about that scenario and what the candidate has done in that situation previously “could you tell me about a time that you…” 4) leave imp questions hanging so they’re forced to talk (don’t insert a leading phrase like “how did you resolve it, how did you manage, etc - ask about a time they tried to solve a problem and it didn’t work or when you were asked to do something you didn’t think was right - then leave it at that
- teachability is imp for any org: 1) what was your bosses name and spell it (makes them think you’ll call them - thus they’ll assume you will contact them) 2) how was he/she as boss (response will give insight what they’re looking for in boss - if they skip it but then follow up with what could they have done more, what could they have done less of) 3) how could you have enhanced relationship (can they critically assess their relationship, is there ownership with improving relationship) 4) what will they say about your strengths 5) what will they say about your weakness (listen for a) can you work with the response in the job b) if they can’t / didn’t know - then they may not have heard the weakness and coaching they were given, so they may not be coachable)
- Evaluating answers: more imp than asking brown shorts questions. Need to know good from bad answers, and needs to be consistent across interviewers, people may answer questions confidently and thoughtfully - but it still may be “wrong” answer. Right and wrong based on your org’s culture and fit within it. Best to use real life examples of answers both good and bad so everyone knows the answers people are looking for. Can ask questions to best and worst people in organization, then use each to flush interview answers out.
- Scoring answers: per their research - high performers tend to respond to answers that imply extreme ownership (vs low performers), talk more about what they’ve done in past (vs what they’re doing or will do in future - compared to low performer), and discuss things in active voice (vs low performer, passive voice), optimistic tone (vs pessimistic), less absolutes and waffling (vs more in low performers).
- Recruiting: P= A+U-S. A: attraction to new job - how does your new job differentiate from current job otherwise they won’t leave, want to be as specific as possible for what you’re looking for with traits. U: urgency and why should this person leave their current job now - S: suspicion about authenticity, can occur when you’re not specific enough and very generic
- Why high performers leave 1) they’re worked hard and not recognized 2) boss doesn’t identify difference between middle and high performers (not appropriately identifying all stars).
- Top ways to get talent to apply 1) employees referral 2) networking event 3) online job board
- Important to emphasize this is also crucial to keep high performers and let go of bad performers - and alter the culture if it’s a systematic issue.

[Gabriele MaZa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a book that every HR MUST read. Moreover even if you don't have anything to do with HR - I still recommend to read this book as it can help you to grow as a person, to prepare for the job interviews or even to change your attitude and your behavior towards your job.
Hiring for attitude is based on the LeadershipIQ study of 20.000 employees over 3 years period and interpretation of results followed by recommendations how to improve those results.
It covers topics as:
* before hiring you must find your companys unique attitude;
* which questions to ask so it would bring you differentiating answers;
* how to grade answers;
* language used in interviews that shows if someone is high or low performer;
* how to give a right message in job advertisement to attract only highperformers;
* how to make current employees better and keep the right culture.

[Viktor Nilsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very practical advice for hiring (specifically the part where you evaluate candidates).

Just having set out to hire my first employee, I found this book to be aiming for a far more seasoned audience. But despite reading some advice that I was unable to follow (such as interviewing current employees about our culture), I found a lot of things here to learn from. The author's advice is convincing, easy to understand, and easy to implement.

Alas, nothing comes free, and there is no ready method for your business to find the best people. But this book gives you some practical advice on how you can build your own method to do just that. After reading this book I feel that I can proceed with much greater confidence. I'm more clear about what I'm looking for, and how to find out if that is what I'm being offered.

[Darwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible Blueprint for Hiring the Right Talent for your Culture

The best book on how to implement best practices for identifying talent that is a cultural fit for your organization specifically, why attitude and emotional intelligence trumps technical ability all days every day, and will additionally help you create best practices to grow the desired attitudes and behaviors to improve on the cultural your leadership desires while taking a more impactful approach to avoiding the cost of an mid-hire.

Understanding your brown shorts helps have the best processes for hiring a team to create a financial gourmet dinner instead of brown bagging it!

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful perspective on looking for high performers in the interview process, and starts with making sure you've got a good set (actually, the right set) of questions and a plan for evaluating the responses. It's also applicable to setting up a performance review system that will actually help managers and employees know what they're doing or not doing on the low/medium/high performance scale. Well written, for a business book, with a reasonable mix of genuine strategy and executable ideas, examples, and the usual padding to flesh out a simple idea into a full chapter.
Uses the Brown Shorts concept from Southwest Airlines.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skimmed/read some sections thoroughly. Overall thought this was a solid book. I learned a lot from the first five chapters or so. The Brown Shorts concept, the way to structure interview questions, and the answer key were particularly important takeaways for me and will be used in my next hiring process. The final few chapters were not super helpful (modifying the job description and using brown shorts post-hiring). I think they could be more fleshed out, and the last chapter could potentially be a book in and of itself.

[Ben Goldin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giving it a 4 since I believe the quality of the book and the style is quite questionable. Repetitive marketing of the consultancy services was really too much to my taste, same time the approach itself is really great. I was looking for something like this for years now and was really excited to find this book, that gives very specific tool based on the statistically proven approach. Whoever is going to read that book, will have to be patient enough to ignore the style and focus on the content :)

[Nicholas C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent read, pretty insightful even for a non-hiring manager. Learned about how ineffective canned interview questions are, since they lead to equally canned answers. It has to be noted that this book is also an advertisement for the author's consultation services. Every few pages the author mentions his services, and I got halfway through the book before I stopped reading out of frustration. If you can stomach the constant mentions of his consulting agency, this is a good read. If not, I would not pick it up.

[Nasos Psarrakos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff!

I really liked the brown short questions method for creating the right set of questions for interviews. But what I truly loved was word pictures towards the end, that actually educates your employees for the proper mindset and to always share what's the right thing to do in every situation. Definitely recommended, if you want to up your game in hiring, even really small time hiring.

[Mircea Petrean · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the first book I read on this topic and I found it very interesting. For a long time I considered the hiring process something that requires only experience, but this book made me realize the science behind it. I always found annoying typical interview questions and wanted to learn how to ask proper questions

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good takeaways. I run a very small retail operation so a lot of the ideas seemed "bigger" than what we can institute and geared toward much larger organizations.
Offered some great thinking points for me to evaluate what can not only help with my employees but focus points for the business overall.

[Kev Willoughby · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is wrong with these interview questions?

1. Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a difficult situation. What did you do?
2. Tell me about a time when you had to balance competing priorities and did so successfully.
3. Tell me about a conflict with a co-worker and how you resolved it.

Mark Murphy's "Hiring for Attitude" is a gem among the bland genre of human resources books, and most of his competition are writing textbook-style offerings that will put you to sleep, if you can finish them at all.

Murphy's work is based around the premise that there are only two types of workers in your organization: problem-bringers and problem-solvers. His practical and subtle interview techniques are easy to implement right away and will reveal candidates for who they really are. For example, in the questions above, if the interviewer modifies each question slightly by removing the last few words of each one, the answers from the candidates are dramatically different:

1. Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a difficult situation.
2. Tell me about a time when you had to balance competing priorities.
3. Tell me about a conflict with a co-worker.

The reason why is simple: a problem-bringer is pre-disposed to think of every situation as a potential problem. If you asked about difficulties / conflicts, that's what a problem bringer wants to talk about anyway, and that will be the focus of the answer they provide. On the other hand, someone who is naturally a problem-solver will not be able to answer those questions (worded exactly the same) without presenting the solution, because they can't leave situations in a state of ambiguity or disarray.

Not only do the stories presented by Murphy in the book bear this out, but my own experiences as the interviewer has as well. Here's an example of a “redesigned” question: “Tell me about a time you lacked the skills to complete an assignment.”

And here are some actual answers presented by Murphy:
"It happened all the time; that’s why I’m interviewing with you."
"That’s why we have administrators; let them figure it out."
"I just ignored their request."

We tried a similar question in a teacher interview a few years ago, asking about "a time when you had difficulty getting along with a co-worker." One candidate proceeded to tell us about getting into a fistfight with a colleague, and he left the answer at that. No resolution whatsoever (After all, was that not what we asked?) In a subsequent interview on the same day, another candidate shared with the interview panel about a time when he challenged a student to a physical altercation because he was being disruptive in class.

These interview techniques work if you follow Murphy's training from the book.

From an interviewer's standpoint, the goal of a job interview should be to get past the candidate's rehearsed answers and find out whether or not they are a good fit for your organization. I liken this to the menu experience at most fast-food restaurants: You see the picture of the item on the menu, but when you order it and they bring it out to you, it never looks as good as it did in the picture, before you made your decision. In a job interview, if you ask the right questions in the right way, you'll be more likely to end up getting what you expected, even after you've made your hiring decision. You want the same candidate at orientation that you hired at the interview.

Murphy's research that led to the interview training presented in this book is based on a 3-year study of about 20,000 newly hired employees in various companies. Out of those 20,000 new hires, 46% failed (were fired, written up, or given poor performance reviews) within the first 18 months on the job. Out of those that failed, 89% failed due to reasons related to attitude. Only 11% failed because of technical skills related to ability to do the job. Murphy's belief is that if the interviewer asks the right questions, the candidate's true attitude can be discovered in the interview stage, and up to 89% of bad hiring decisions can be eliminated.

I won't give away everything within this review, but Murphy also goes on to talk about the 4 types of interview questions you should never ask. The reader will also discover the interesting methods used by Southwest Airlines to develop their own interview questions and how those questions should be different based on the unique culture of each organization. Murphy gives a practical blueprint that is great for training administrators to pinpoint just what that culture is in your organization and how you can develop interview questions around each characteristic that you are looking for in a successful candidate.

I've used Murphy's "Hiring for Attitude" as my go-to training manual for interviewing techniques at the last two organizations I have worked for, and I've also been invited to share the training in other organizations as well. It is simple to understand, and it gets results.

I wish more HR books were written as well as this one. Mark Murphy also has another book called "Hundred Percenters." You might want to check it out as well. It teaches supervisors how to get the most out of their employees after they're hired.

[Andy Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent primer on behavioural interviewing

A conversational, easy read. Hiring for attitude deconstructs traditional recruitment practices and presents its new approach clearly with practical examples. Theories are well explained and applicable

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was new to recruitment, I wanted to get a sense of how to effectively hire for attitude and select culture fits. This book did a tremendous job of preparing me for recruitment and helped develop me into a more effective recruiter.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The company I work for uses this book as part of their hiring process. There were things that I agreed with and some things that I did not. It was worth the read to better understand what I am looking for in a new hire.

[Dave H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good concepts, way too much fluff in the book. Half of the examples could be dropped, and the pitches for the authors company could be dropped. This would be a 5 star book if it were heavily edited down to its base concepts.

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

The specific examples were helpful and I certainly agree with the philosophy of hiring for attitude. Like many business books, this emphatically tells us that there is the One Right Way for x and that this book will tell you what that is.

[Melissa Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big help in hiring

[Jess Kang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye opening for me on how to hire the right people suitable for ones's organisation.