Do You Have What It Takes to Be a ‘Personality Hire’?

If you get further on charm than skill and carry a workload light enough to float atop your bubbly demeanor, then you might be a “personality hire.”

Charismatic employees lay the foundations of positive corporate cultures—or leave teammates to pick up the slack. While some people proudly advertise themselves as personality hires on LinkedIn, others roll their eyes.

“It’s annoying,” says Lauren Gomes Atwood , a project manager in upstate New York. “They always have time to hang out in the hallway, but when do they sit down and work?”

Atwood, 39 years old, says she worked with a personality hire in a previous job. Though fun to be around, the person eventually generated resentment and, after winning a promotion , prompted several co-workers to quit, she says.

Atwood started a remote job last month and says her search took longer than expected, partly because interviewers seemed as interested in her vibe as they were in her experience. She describes herself as matter-of-fact and says she doesn’t give off the effervescence some employers appeared to be looking for.

Bosses want the warm-and-fuzzies as the mood at work is generally sour . One-third of U.S. employees say they’re engaged in their jobs—near an all-time low, according to Gallup’s annual report on the state of the workforce, released this month. Half of workers say they feel a lot of stress, and 49% are interested in new job opportunities or actively applying.

With so many lonely, unhappy charges, bosses are desperate for good workplace energy. They say camaraderie is hard to build on hybrid schedules, so they prize upbeat employees whose energy is (hopefully) infectious.

Michael Zachary , a security manager at Pratt & Whitney, says he learned the value of a winning disposition in the Navy. He noticed qualities like collegiality and willingness to learn often proved more critical to new recruits’ success than natural talent.

Certain roles at the defence contractor where he works now are highly specialised and must be filled by the most technically qualified candidates, he says. But others, like data-entry clerks, could be performed adequately by dozens of applicants.

“In that case, I’m going to hire the nicest person to be part of the group,” says Zachary, 38.

Meme to management strategy

The concept of a personality hire—like quiet quitting and lazy-girl jobs before—crystallised on social media. Few have captured the essence better than comedian Vienna Ayla, who plays a Miss Congeniality type in skits that have been viewed tens of millions of times on TikTok and Instagram.

The running joke is that her all-style-no-substance character contributes nothing, until she becomes a hero through schmoozing. In one bit, she gets her team a deadline extension by buttering up the chief executive. In another, she calls in a favour from the mayor, who happens to be her workout partner in an “ass and abs” exercise class.

Ayla, 27, tells me she hears from viewers who work with people like her character. Many feel frustrated, while others concede that personality hires can prove their worth in key moments, despite their lack of hustle.

“I kind of admire that type of person who doesn’t get so worked up but still manages to save the day,” says Ayla, who describes her real-life persona as type A.

Businesses don’t want caricatures, but many judge applicants differently than they did during hiring sprees a couple of years ago, says Brian Vesce , co-founder and CEO of RefAssured, a candidate-reference startup.

Skill was king during the talent war of 2021 and 2022, but recent layoffs suggest a lot of companies believe they have enough, or even too many, capable employees.

“We are seeing more employers looking for the right personality when a role opens up,” Vesce says.

Sensing the shift, he launched RefAssured last year in an attempt to measure characteristics in job candidates that are often called “intangibles.” Using the company’s software, references answer a series of questions about how an applicant communicates, handles stress, takes feedback and manages conflict. The responses yield a candidate’s soft-skill rating on a five-point scale.

Customers include 10 of the country’s 100 largest staffing agencies, Vesce says, and he expects to triple that total by year-end.

Red flag or badge of honour

Personality hires are a growing presence in tech, as efficiency-minded companies seek engineers who can also make time with customers, says Lorde Astor West , founder of RadHash, which makes back-end software for startups. But people who excel at gabbing about technology products usually aren’t the best coders, in her experience.

“The life of the party might be an individual who isn’t as capable, and now you have other team members who are having to make up the difference and fix mistakes,” she says.

Astor, 49, leads a team of about 100 employees and contractors and says she’s developed an appreciation for the snippy or introverted people who get things done. Give her a pricklebush over a personality hire any day.

Others wear the personality-hire label proudly. They say keeping their energy up takes effort and makes people around them better.

Danielle Norris calls herself a “personality hire meets hard work” on LinkedIn. She tells me emotional intelligence is among the top qualities she brings to her role as a marketing manager at the Jonus Group, a recruiting firm for insurance and finance companies. In meetings, she says she’s able to sense when a colleague is hesitant to share an idea and can help put that person at ease with a smile or encouraging word.

That leads to greater collaboration and results, according to Norris, 32.

“I bring the vibes,” she says. “I’m always looking to have a good time, but I’m still able to drive my team to success.”

To get what you want, try closing your mouth.

A well-deployed silence can radiate confidence and connection. The trouble is, so many of us are awful at it.

We struggle to sit in silence with others, and rush to fill the void during a pause in conversation. We want to prove we’re smart or get people to like us, solve the problem or just stop that deafening, awkward sound of nothing.

The noise of social media and constant opinions have us convinced we must be louder to be heard. But do we?

“I should just shut up,” Joan Moreno , an administrative assistant in Spring, Texas, often thinks while hearing herself talk.

Still, she barrels on, giving job candidates at the hospital where she works a full history of the building and parking logistics. She slips into a monologue during arguments with her husband, even when there’s nothing good left to say. She tries to determine, via a torrent of texts, if her son is giving her the silent treatment. (Turns out he just had a cold.)

“I should have just held it in,” she thinks afterward.

We often talk ourselves out of a win. Our need to have the last word can make the business deal implode or the friend retreat, pushing us further from people we love and things we want.

“Let your breath be the first word,” advises Jefferson Fisher , a Texas trial lawyer who shares communication tips on social media.

The beauty of silence, he says, is that it can never be misquoted. Instead, it can act as a wet blanket, tamping down the heat of a dispute. Or it can be a mirror, forcing the other person to reflect on what they just said.

In court, he’ll pause for 10 seconds to let a witness’s insistence that she’s never texted while driving hang in the air. Sure enough, he says, she’ll fill the void, giving roundabout explanations and excuses before finally admitting, yes, she was on her phone.

For a mediation session, he trained a client to respond in a subdued manner if the other party said something to rile him up. When an insult was lobbed, the client sat quietly, then slowly asked his adversary to repeat the comment. No emotional reaction, just implicit power.

“You’re the one who’s in control,” Fisher says.

Acing negotiations

To be the boss, “you gotta be quiet,” says Daniel Hamburger , who spent years as the chief executive of education and healthcare technology firms.

He once sat across the negotiating table from an executive who was convinced his company was worth far more than Hamburger wanted to pay to acquire it. What Hamburger desperately wanted to do was explain all the reasons behind his math. What he actually did was throw out a number and then shut his mouth.

Soon they were shaking on a deal.

Hamburger, who retired last year and now sits on three corporate boards, also deployed strategic silence when running meetings or leading teams. If the boss chimes in first, he says, some people won’t speak up with valuable insights.

Days into one CEO job, Hamburger was confronted with two options for rewriting a piece of the company’s software. He didn’t answer, and instead turned the question back on the tech team.

“People were like, ‘Really? Are you really asking?’” he says. By morning, he had a 50-page deck from the team outlining the plan they’d long thought was best. He left them to it, and the project was done in record time, he says.

A day without speaking

Staying mum can feel like going against biology. Humans are social animals, says Robert N. Kraft , a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at Otterbein University, in Ohio.

“Our method of connecting—and we crave it—is talking,” he says, adding that it excites us, raising our blood pressure, adrenaline and cortisol.

For years, Kraft assigned his students a day without words. No talking, no texting. Some of the students’ friends reported later that they’d been unnerved. After all, silence can be a weapon.

Many students also found that when forced to listen, they bonded better with their peers.

When we spend conversations plotting what to say next, we’re focused on ourselves. Those on the receiving end often don’t want to hear our advice or semi related anecdotes anyway. They just want someone to listen as they work through things on their own.

The question mark trick

Without pauses, we’re generally worse speakers, swerving into tangents or stumbling over sounds.

Michael Chad Hoeppner , a former actor who now runs a communications training firm, recommends an exercise to get used to taking a beat. Ask one question out loud, then draw a big question mark in the air with your finger—silently.

“That question mark is there to help you live through that fraught moment of, ‘I really should keep talking,’” Hoeppner says.

At a cocktail party or in the boardroom, you can subtly trace a question mark by your side or in your pocket to force a pause.

Sell with silence

Fresh out of college, Kyler Spencer struggled through meetings with potential clients. Some sessions stretched to two hours and still didn’t end in a yes.

The financial adviser, based in Nashville, Ill., realized he was rambling for 15-minute stretches, spouting off random economic facts in an attempt to sound savvy and experienced.

“I basically just bulldozed the meeting,” says Spencer, now 27.

He started meditating and doing breathing exercises to calm his nerves before meetings. He now makes sure to stop talking after a minute or two. The other person will jump in, sharing about their life, fears and goals. It’s information Spencer can use to build trust and pitch the right products.

His client list soon started filling up, and happy customers now send referrals his way.

“It’s amazing,” he says, “what you learn when you’re not the one talking.”