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.”

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

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

Productivity comes second for charming employees who make workplaces more fun

Meme to management strategy

Red flag or badge of honour

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.