Hiring for Attitude Over Experience: What the Numbers Show

What is hiring for attitude over experience?

Hiring for attitude over experience means prioritizing a candidate’s mindset, motivation and interpersonal skills over their technical background alone. While experience still matters, this approach recognizes that skills can often be taught, while attitude is harder to change.

Most job postings reflect this tension. Employers typically list required experience and technical qualifications, which makes sense: Companies want candidates who can do the job. At the same time, many listings also emphasize soft skills, such as workplace collaboration, adaptability and a willingness to learn. On paper, both skill sets appear equally important.

In reality, that balance doesn’t always hold up once interviews begin. Job descriptions may call out soft skills and personality traits, but hiring decisions often come down to hard skills and past experience. The result is that candidates are chosen for what they already know, not how they work, learn or contribute to a team.

Hiring for attitude aims to correct that imbalance by ensuring interviews assess not only what candidates can do today, but how they approach learning, problem-solving and collaboration over time.

Reasons to hire for attitude over experience

While some roles require highly specialized technical and business skills or industry experience, many employers find that a candidate’s attitude plays a larger role in long-term success than experience alone. Here are four reasons why.

1. Employees with good attitudes see long-term success.

While experience can help employees get up to speed faster, attitude often determines how far they go over time. Employees with adaptability skills who are collaborative and open to learning tend to perform more consistently as roles evolve and expectations change.

That pattern shows up in recent research as well. A 2025 analysis published in Harvard Business Review examined more than 70 million job transitions across over 1,000 occupations and found that workers with strong foundational skills, including communication, problem-solving and adaptability, were more likely to advance and stay resilient as their careers evolved.

The same trend appears in studies of new-hire outcomes. Long-term success tends to hinge less on technical gaps and more on how employees respond to feedback, navigate challenges and work with others day to day. Research from Leadership IQ, for example, found that most new-hire failures stem from attitude-related issues, such as poor coachability, low emotional intelligence or lack of motivation, rather than from a lack of technical skill.

Together, these findings suggest that while experience matters, attitude plays a larger role in determining whether employees continue to grow, adapt and succeed over the long term.

2. Skills can be taught, but attitude cannot.

Through professional development opportunities and investing in employee training, employers can teach employees new skills and help them grow within the organization. In fact, U.S. organizations spent $102.8 billion on employee training in 2025, with employees averaging 40 hours of training, according to the 2025 Training Industry Report.

This level of investment reflects a clear expectation: Skills will change, and employees will need ongoing development and professional growth to keep up. What training cannot easily fix, however, is attitude. Mindset, motivation and willingness to learn are far harder to instill, especially when employees resist feedback or change.

Recent research underscores that distinction. According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report 2025, 91 percent of learning and development professionals say human skills are increasingly important, and 91 percent say continuous learning is more important than ever for career success.

Employees with strong attitudes who are curious, adaptable and open to growth are more likely to benefit from training investments and apply new skills effectively over time. When attitude is missing, even well-funded training programs can fall short.

3. Employees represent your company to your customers and clients.

When you’re hiring employees who will interact with customers or clients regularly, attitude is critical and matters just as much as skill. Frontline employees are often the face of your company, shaping how customers perceive your brand through everyday interactions.

Recent research highlights just how high the stakes can be. As noted in PwC’s 2025 customer experience survey, a single bad experience is often enough for customers to walk away from a brand. More than half of consumers (52 percent) say they’ve stopped buying from a brand after a disappointing product experience, while another 29 percent cite poor customer service as the breaking point. That’s how quickly trust and customer loyalty can disappear. Because employees play such a central role in delivering those experiences, their attitude and approach can have a direct impact on customer satisfaction.

A toxic employee with a consistently poor attitude can damage your reputation quickly or lead to negative online reviews, which can be difficult to overcome.

4. Employee attitudes affect your company culture.

In today’s competitive job market, company culture has become a deciding factor for talented job seekers choosing their new employer. Employees don’t just evaluate pay and benefits: They also pay close attention to how people treat one another and whether a company’s values show up in day-to-day behavior.

Research shows how much culture matters. According to a 2025 survey by EY, 94 percent of U.S. workers say workplace culture influences whether they stay at a company, and 60 percent say it plays a major role in their decision to remain in their job. When culture feels misaligned or unhealthy, employees are far more likely to disengage or leave.

Because culture is shaped by people, employee attitude plays a central role. How employees communicate, collaborate, handle workplace conflict and support one another determines how a company’s values are experienced in practice. By prioritizing attitude during the hiring process, employers can build a strong company culture that supports engagement, trust and long-term retention.

How to hire for attitude

There are a few practical ways to get a better read on a candidate’s attitude during the hiring process.

1. Start by defining the attitude the role actually requires. Different roles call for different mindsets, so it helps to be specific upfront. For example, when hiring a sales team member, confidence and persistence may be essential. That same approach may matter far less (or even work against you) in a role that requires deep focus or independent work, such as graphic design.
2. Use behavioral questions to surface how candidates think and respond. Behavioral interview questions like “Can you tell me about a time you failed?” can be especially telling. The details of the situation matter less than how the candidate talks about it. Do they take ownership and explain what they learned, or do they shift blame and focus on what went wrong around them?
3. Get help from your team. You’ll often get a better read on attitude when more than one person is involved. Team members may pick up on things a hiring manager misses, such as how a candidate treats support staff, how they engage in casual conversation or how they interact outside of formal interview questions. Giving candidates a chance to meet potential co-workers can also reveal whether they’ll mesh well with the team.
4. Consider internal promotions. When someone already works for you, their attitude isn’t hypothetical; you’ve seen it play out over time. You know how they handle feedback, pressure and collaboration, and how they treat co-workers when no one’s watching. That makes promoting from within less about predicting behavior and more about recognizing it. There’s also a practical upside. Research from McKinsey & Company shows that internal hires tend to experience lower attrition during the onboarding process than external hires, which makes promoting from within a smart option when long-term fit matters.
5. Use employee referrals as a second signal. Employee referrals can offer a similar advantage, especially when they come from people you trust. A referral often brings context you won’t get from a resume, including how the candidate works with others, how they respond to challenges and whether their mindset aligns with your culture. While referrals aren’t foolproof, they can help surface attitude early, before the interview process begins.

How to determine whether to hire for attitude or experience

Attitude should be a crucial factor in most hiring decisions, but it can’t always come first. Some roles, such as highly technical or specialized positions, require high-level expertise above all else. In those cases, attitude may be an important but secondary consideration.

When deciding whether attitude or experience should rank higher for a specific role, consider the following questions:

• Will this be a long-term employee or a short-term hire for a specific project?
• Will this person work closely with other employees, customers or clients?
• Do you have the time and resources to train the employee, or does the role require immediate expertise?
• Is this a position where technical mistakes could have serious legal, financial or safety consequences?
• Can the required technical skills be developed through on-the-job training or mentorship?

This framework is a useful starting point, but it’s important to note that the most successful hires often bring both a positive attitude and relevant experience. The goal isn’t choosing one over the other in every situation, but finding the right balance based on your organization’s needs and the demands of the role.

Kimberlee Leonard contributed to this article.