Top Qualities for Success in Business

Summary: Employers hope to discover if their candidates have the highly desired qualities through extensive interviews and even trial periods.

What does it take to be successful in business? A survey by Hyper Island found that personality and “cultural alignment” are more important than “skill set.” The survey asked over 500 professionals what qualities they looked for.

The surveyed thought leaders and professionals for the study were from a wide range of industries such as advertising and marketing, technology, retail, and manufacturing from NGOs and the public sector. Over half of those surveyed were from leadership positions in their organizations.

Seventy-eight percent responded that personality was the most important quality. This includes the personal qualities of being creative, open-minded, and driven. Personality incorporates being flexible and having a unique combination of creativity and drive to propel them forward. Fifty-three percent said cultural alignment incorporates being able to make decisions based on values shared with the organization. Only 39 percent seeks skills as the number one quality. Specific industries will value skills more such as technology. They want to see talent with creative technology, UX/UI design, programming, and analytics.

Employers are specifically looking for honesty, ability to delegate, communication, commitment, confidence, creativity, a positive attitude, ability to inspire, and intuition. Most employers hope to discover these qualities during the interview but often the top companies use trial periods to discover if candidates have these qualities.

Photo: glassdoor.com