Terms like teamwork or good communication are often used when recruiting new employees. But these terms are misleading. They refer to skills, but in reality they are characteristics. However, personality traits and skills are not the same.
Requirements for personality traits in recruiting are problematic. The meaning of these types of requirements offers a wide range of interpretation. This leads to different understandings. The assessment of fulfillment is therefore highly subjective. Personality traits are not directly observable and are usually applied across the board, regardless of the environment or the conditions. Human behavior is always tied to a context. Therefore, personality traits provide supplementary information at best, but not an objective basis for selection decisions. If you want fair and accurate decisions, you should instead focus on concretely observable actions and relevant skills.
Traits describe personality traits that are difficult to change and thus answer the question of WHO someone is. There are serious objections to the use of personality traits in recruiting, as their use is based on simplistic models, ignores individual development potential, and carries the risk of forcing people into rigid categories instead of considering their actual actions and competencies in relevant contexts.
Skills describe concrete, observable behavior in practice. Skills thus answer the question of HOW a person acts. They are directly observable and can be developed relatively easily. In recruiting, the use of actual skills—that is, observable, context-related actions—is advantageous because the fit can be assessed much more reliably, and development potential and talents can be identified.
In recruiting, the focus should consistently be on concrete, observable skills instead of vague personality traits. If the requirements are formulated as behavior-related competencies, actual actions can be made visible by using structured behavioral questions. The key is not to assume what someone is like, but to base your decision on what they actually do in practice, based on observable actions.
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