Why I hire for the person, not just the skills

Hiring is one of the most misunderstood parts of building a business.

On paper, most people say they want the best skills, the strongest CV, the most impressive experience. And of course, competence matters. You can’t build serious businesses by ignoring ability altogether.

But over time, I’ve learned that skills alone are rarely what make or break a team.

What actually determines whether someone works out long term is their character.

I’m not talking about hiring people who aren’t capable, or pretending that intelligence and experience don’t matter. They do. But when I look back at the hires that really worked, and the ones that caused the most problems, the difference was almost never technical ability.

It was trust.

You can train skills. You can teach systems, processes, and even industry knowledge. What you can’t train is integrity, judgement, or how someone behaves when no one is watching.

Some of the most disruptive people I’ve worked with were technically very strong. On paper, they looked perfect. In reality, they brought ego, shortcuts, politics, or a lack of accountability into the room. Over time, that costs far more than any skills gap ever would.

On the flip side, I’ve seen people grow rapidly when they had the right attitude and values. If someone is reliable, honest, open to learning, and aligned with how you want to run a business, most gaps can be closed. Training is straightforward compared to fixing trust issues.

This is why I’ve become far more focused on who someone is, not just what they can do today.

How they handle pressure.
How they treat people who can’t do anything for them.
Whether they take responsibility when things go wrong, or look for someone else to blame.

Those things don’t show up on a CV, but they show up very quickly in real life.

When people talk about hiring for a “tribe,” it often gets dismissed as fluffy language. It isn’t. It’s about building teams where you don’t need to constantly second-guess intentions or micromanage behaviour. Where you can delegate properly because trust is already there.

Skills will always evolve. Markets change, technology shifts, roles expand. The people who last are the ones whose character doesn’t need rewriting every time the business grows.

If I had to prioritise one thing when hiring now, it would be this. Find people you trust first. Everything else is far easier to teach than that.