Hire People With Positive Attitudes

Positive people are more successful than negative people. Among other things they are more productive, more creative, better team players, and healthier.

According to Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, “seventy-five percent of job success is predicted not by intelligence and technical skills, but by three other factors: the belief that your behavior matters, which is optimism; your social support at work; and whether or not you see stress as a challenge or as a threat.” These are all characteristics of positive people.

Therefore, if companies want successful employees they should hire people with positive attitudes. While it is true that our attitude is in large part due to our thoughts and actions, meaning we can choose to be positive, some people just don’t want to be happy. They are proud of the fact that they are realistic while happy people have their heads in the clouds.

Negative people who don’t feel there is a need to change may never make the effort required to become more positive. Not only will this hurt their likelihood of success, but their negative energy will also decrease the productivity of people around them.

Yet despite the importance of a positive attitude for success, most companies focus on technical skills or intelligence when making hiring decisions. They don’t realize that it is often easier to change what people know than to change who they are. They may hire a genius, but if he has a negative attitude it will get in the way of his success and that of his colleagues.

Don’t underestimate the power of positivity when deciding who to hire. It is more important than you may think!