# Top Traits of 10/10 Candidates (Adriane Schwager) - **Episode:** [109](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/109.md) (2024-06-25) - **Type:** news-roundup - **Tags:** hiring, candidate-traits, recruitment, adriane-schwager - **Time:** 5:32–10:48 (start 332s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/109?t=332](https://truthliesandwork.com/109?t=332) --- [5:32] Al Elliott: To be honest, I don't say anything on Twitter. I just, I just Sit there with popcorn and see what goes on. But yeah, so I was, I was trawling Twitter and I saw this post by the amazing Adrienne. Adrienne, I've only ever seen it written down [5:45] Leanne Elliott: Adrienne [5:45] Al Elliott: Adrienne Schwager. Adrienne is the co-founder and CEO of Growth Assistant, which is a group which helps marketing teams focus on results by providing full-time offshore employees. She has interviewed literally thousands of candidates and she found that 10 out of 10 candidates, as she describes, especially the leaders, have got 5 things in common. So here are the 5 things. We will link to the full post. You can have a little read through to it because I have slightly, um, what's the word when you, um, I nearly said plagiarise. I didn't mean plagiarise [6:14] Leanne Elliott: Summarised? [6:15] Al Elliott: Summarised. Exactly. That's exactly what I meant. But the first one is hypercompetence. They go beyond just getting the job done. They are very clear about delivering exceptional work, being reliable, taking ownership, especially in unfamiliar areas. Number 2 was awareness. They have a clear understanding of their strengths, their weaknesses, their likes, dislikes, and most importantly, their blind spots. Number 3 was versatility. They are very adaptable and willing to take on various roles, and they recognise their limitations but are eager to learn and improve. Number 4 was problem solvers, which of course is what you want in your business. They're happy to look out for problems and opportunities and design effective solutions and proactively steer the company in the right direction. I think Adrienne has said that they always make it rain. And the final one was quite interesting. Resilience. She found that most people who are 10 out of 10 candidates have burnt out. They've experienced burnt out, but they've learned from it. And this has helped them to understand their limits, recognize their mistakes, and know how to avoid future burnout. Now, I will link to the full post in our show notes, and you should definitely go onto Twitter and follow her because she is pretty amazing. Any thoughts on that, Lee? [7:31] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, I think I do have a bit of beef with this, actually. These are quite general traits, aren't they, and behaviours. It's all about how you're going to specifically define that within the constraints of your organisation and measure it to know if these people have it. My beef more comes from, again, I'm really tired of the emphasis being on the individual in terms of making themselves a 10 out of 10 candidate, in terms of making sure that they don't burn out. And that really frustrates me because equally, I would be more excited by this if Adrian had flipped it and she was like, these are the 5 things that we provide for our employees to make sure that we have 10 out of 10 talent in our organization, how we develop talent in our organization. That would get me excited. You know, she's talking about how that— how they enable people to take ownership, how they build people's strengths and self-awareness of leaders, how they provide access to other projects or departments or functions to allow people to be versatile and adaptable in what they can do. Um, if help, you know, they create an environment of psychological safety where you can innovate and problem solve in, in that really proactive manner. Or, you know, we're creating those environments where rest and recovery is prioritized and people don't burn out because we, we create an environment that supports their well-being and their mental health. I just think it's a lazy— it's a lazy thing to go, you know, anyone who's burnt out, who has hit that rock bottom, is going to be the best person to employ because they're the most resilient. And yeah, maybe, but what a crappy thing to put people through. If anyone has actually experienced burnout, it's one of the most difficult and disruptive things that you can experience. So to assume that actually it's better to just let people get to that breaking point, I just think is, is a bit distasteful, actually. Um, so yeah, no, not a fan. Sorry, Adrian [9:26] Al Elliott: Well, I was going to, uh, to tag her in and say, look, we featured your, your tweet, but I don't think I will anymore. I think what's interesting about that is that that she came came at it, and I also saw it from from the lead from the business owner's point of view going yeah great we now have this checklist of of what we want from a ten out of ten and of course you're coming from completely other way the the work the the workplace culture side of it and so I mean that's why we have business owner business psychologists that's what that's the dynamic because we can have arguments like this I agree with your points but I also think it's nice to No, I think that post simplifies things massively for me because I go, okay, well, if I, if I, if these are the 5 things I'm looking out for, great. Well, that's what I'm looking out for [10:09] Leanne Elliott: I just don't understand why you wouldn't put this much effort into actually developing your people rather than the effort of trying to find these people naturally out there in the organizational wild [10:17] Al Elliott: I think that's a valid point. I think, to be fair, in the defense of the tweet, and it was, it was, she's very prolific on, uh, Twitter. She will probably put this out because she wanted people to start saying stuff Like you've said in the comments, because that's how you get engagement and that's how you get followers. So, um, I'd imagine that it's not necessarily what she's thinking, although it's probably based on something she's thinking. But, um, anyway, it got engagement all right, didn't it? Leanne, what have you got next? What have you seen?