Alex over at PositiveSharing.com always has great tips and info on being happy at work, but this article on hiring happy people at the British based company Pret A Manger particularly caught my attention.
Alex pulled just the right quote from this article from The Insider blog:
“You can’t hire someone who can make sandwiches and teach them to be happy,” says Jay, “So we hire happy people and teach them to make sandwiches”
This may seem like an oversimplification, but it’s true! I’ve always felt when hiring that you are much better interviewing the person first, then worry about their skills. I’ve seen folks with more experience than I come in to a job and have a negative impact on those around them and I’ve seen folks with practically no experience come in and do wonderfully.
The full interview with Pret’s Head of Communication Jay Chapman has some fantastic content and is well worth the read. sandwich
Well said! I can relate to the idea of having a very skilled person come into a job, only to find out that their people skills aren’t great at all, making it very difficult for other workers to enjoy their time at work.
Thanks for posting!!
dave
Congrats! You’ve now eliminated all the really smart people who aren’t gregarious. Fine for a sandwich shop. Fine for a sales job. Not fine for back end IT functions. But if they’re all going back to wherever in 2 years, I guess that’s ok too. If that’s what you want.
That’s not what I want. I don’t think that is too good for most companies most valuable assets, either.
Smart and happy don’t go well together in our society.
I don’t want to stress on the happiness point as much as I would like to stress on this sentence: “I’ve seen folks with more experience than I come in to a job and have a negative impact on those around them and I’ve seen folks with practically no experience come in and do wonderfully.”
I had an intern working for me and she had no experience with the programming language we were using whatsoever, nevertheless, I approved her internship. She learned our programming language in literally 3 days (she had a Java background) and in a week she was actually producing. I think companies only hiring people with experience are missing a lot. Smart, inexperienced people can become smart, experienced, loyal, and happy employees very fast.
Joel,
I disagree, and not just because I’ve worked with a lot of smart, happy people. People who enjoy what they’re doing are happier people and better workers! Look at the most successful people in any field and you’ll find people who are genuinely excited about what they’re doing and having fun.
I disagree with Jon Emmons, but I can say that everyone is different. But at the end of it all, if your not happy with where you work it is harder to do your job efficiently.
It can also make your work difficult, as well as make it difficult for that unhappy employee integrate with others effectively. Happiness is cheap and successful way of getting people to work hard and stay in their job.