Hire for Heart Over Talent — Every Time

I've hired a lot of people. When I was building the AEM development team at U.S. Bank, I hired 65 contractors over three years. The attrition rate — people who left or were let go early — was low. Consistently lower than comparable teams.

When people ask me what I look for in hiring, they usually expect a skills answer. A framework of technical competencies, a rubric of qualifications.

My answer is simpler: heart over talent, every time.

What "Heart" Actually Means in a Hiring Context

I don't mean personality. I don't mean warmth or likability. I mean something more structural: the motivational substrate.

Heart, in a professional context, is the combination of:

• Genuine investment in doing good work — not just getting paid, not just building a résumé, but actually caring about the quality of the output
• Hunger to grow — the intrinsic motivation to get better, to learn, to not be in the same place professionally next year
• Integrity under pressure — the tendency to tell the truth about problems rather than manage appearances, especially when the truth is uncomfortable
• Orientation toward the team — the willingness to help, share knowledge, and make the people around them better

These are not traits you can teach. You can develop them in someone who has the seeds of them. You cannot install them in someone who doesn't.

The Talent Trap

High talent without heart creates a specific failure mode: the brilliant contributor who optimizes for themselves.

They solve their problems quickly. They move on. They don't document. They don't share. They don't develop others. They take credit and distribute blame. And when something goes wrong in a domain they touched six months ago, they're nowhere to be found.

Individually, they look high-performing. Systemically, they're expensive.

The team with five good-enough contributors who are hungry and oriented toward each other consistently outperforms the team with one brilliant contributor and four people navigating around their wake.

How I Screen for Heart

I watch more than I ask. How does this person talk about the team they're leaving? With contempt, or with respect? Do they give credit generously, or do they center their own contributions? When I ask about a failure, do they analyze it honestly or manage the narrative?

I ask: what did your last teammate learn from working with you? That question is strange enough that most scripted interview answers don't fit — and what comes out is usually revealing.

I look for the person who talks about their colleagues' growth the way they talk about their own accomplishments. That's the heart signal.

The Good-Enough Threshold

Heart over talent doesn't mean credentials don't matter. They do. There's a threshold of technical competency below which heart cannot compensate.

Find the threshold. Hire from above it. Then weight heavily for heart.

The person who is good enough and hungry to become great will get there faster than the talented person who has already decided they're done growing.

Hire for heart. Train for talent. Build the culture that turns both into excellence.