Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Peter Schutz
Peter Schutz
Peter Schutz
Peter Schutz, the former CEO of Porsche, he said once in a well-articulated way “Hire
character, train skill”. More and more recruiters realise that it’s not all about just having the right
set of skills. Often it seems that the character of a person plays a more important role when
looking for the right person. The focus lies on the applicant’s personality, demeanour, experience,
drive, adaptability, fast learning, problem solving and creative thinking. Specific specialist skills,
knowledge and understanding can be taught and easily be learnt by the person.
If I will be a manager, I would like to hire someone that has a good attiture. The one who can
proved that his/her work ethic and attitude were impeccable, while his/her skills gap could easily
be overcome by providing him/her with tailor-made training. The one who doesn’t has a good
attitude but he/she has a very nice skill would not have needed any further training but his lack
of commitment towards the company and the poor culture fit could have led to several conflicts
and issues in the long run.
Attitude is not really something we can teach someone, either we have it or we don’t have it. If a
candidate needs to be reminded continuously – or even forced – to do things or behave in a
certain way in order to achieve the desired outcome, it is not something that will benefit the
company. It’s therefore much more beneficial to hire people with the right mindset and provide
them with training that helps them to excel in their future tasks. There are still some open
questions regarding the training offered to Steve that would need to be considered