Why skills-first hiring fails in IT

I would surmise that much of this could be attributed to far more "social" aspects being, inappropriately so, brought into the workplace, especially in an industry long known for its preference to technology over inter-personal relationships. It's one thing to be a complete jerk, it's another to be highly skilled and motivated, and just wanting to clock in, do a damn good job at what you do, and clock out - without turning your professional occupation into a "dating relationship" with your company and co-workers. As such, I am uncertain that "skills-first hiring [is failing IT]", so much as "expecting your IT guys to be as bubbly and engaged as your marketing team is unrealistic, and, likely quite harmful to your company's future, if not your bottom line". Would you rather have an IT team (outside of helpdesk) that is engaged and at the top of your company on inter-personal relationships, or one who knows what they're doing? Those two things can be mutually inclusive; but, they are far more often [at least to a considerable degree] mutually exclusive - in IT.

Very good post and thank you Matt for writing this! I was just talking about this very same topic today.

This. You rock Matt Sharples!

Gene Pitts, CPSAE sounds like what you and I've been doing for 5 years... must be trendsetters! Thanks for the partnership.