This essay as told is based on a conversation with Daniel Bennett, the 28-year-old founder of DX Creative, a social consulting agency and former advertising account executive. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I interviewed for my first corporate job at a giant advertising agency in Los Angeles called TBWAChiatDay, my goal was to make the interviewers like me – that was it.
I wasn’t there to impress them or show them I could learn or anything. I thought, “If I can make them laugh and smile and have a good time, that will be more memorable than someone who can recite all their accolades.” »
Because it was an advertising agency in Los Angeles, there was a basketball court in the office, and their first question was, “Did you see the basketball court behind you?”
My opening line in the interview was, “Yes, I was taking warm-up photos for this interview before you came. Am I sweaty?” They loved it; they laughed heartily.
I ended up beating two people with three or four years of experience, even though I had no experience.
Difference between a personality hire and a good personality.
There is a difference between someone hired with personality and someone who simply has a good personality.
Imagine walking into work with your coffee and the person you’ve hired says, “You’ll never guess who I met this weekend!”
A normal person might keep this information to themselves, but a recruited personality will want to entertain the office with their hilarious story of meeting an ex.
We can get by doing less work
As a recruited personality, you can get away with not being as competent and doing half your job. (I’m not that kind of person, but there are personalities like that.)
Does this mean someone else is taking over? Probably. But it’s up to the company’s discretion whether they keep you.
There are some people who may not pass tests or can’t put together a marketing deployment, but are very successful in their role because they’re smart. Maybe a personality hire has a lot of connections and “always knows a guy” who can get you into a full restaurant for six months, which could result in a deal. But maybe this person doesn’t know how to write a dissertation.
These “know a man” skills are really useful in careers built around relationship management, which is more meaningful than being good at sending emails.
Yet, if you are just a personality employee and do absolutely no work, you will be fired.
Although I am a personality employee, I still worked hard; I worked 60 hours a week and stayed up until 1 a.m. so we could finish a commercial.
In these cases, the positive attitudes of the recruited personalities are useful. Cracking jokes with your coworkers at 1 a.m. on a deadline makes the situation much more bearable than everyone being miserable.
Being a personality employee allowed me to call in favors
In the office, I was the one who said, “Guys, we have an hour between meetings. Let’s go for a walk and have lunch! Or “Let’s go get a smoothie.” Or: “This place has an after-work happy hour. Are you coming?” It’s those little things that some companies would call team bonding.
As a low-level account assistant, I did all the heavy lifting, like organizing files and retrieving hard drives.
But I always knew how to walk around the office and talk to different people to build relationships; instead of sending a Slack message or email, I was going to ask them.
I always felt that if I needed a favor from someone, they were much more likely to help me if I walked up to them and said hello, rather than just sending them a email and never speak to him.
The world runs on favors, and you don’t do favors for people you don’t like.
If I needed a quick change on a design or billboard, I could hire a designer, and they would be willing to work with me on a tight deadline.
Companies need to recruit personalities to build their corporate culture
Companies that pride themselves on having “disruptive” and different work cultures need personality hires, because otherwise who is going to build that culture?
It may be controversial to say, but employees without an outgoing personality won’t build your company culture: Hires without a personality aren’t as fun at parties or lead to office gossip. For Gen Z and millennials, there are other motivations for going to work than just getting the job done.
Hiring personalities can also help companies attract the right talent by providing the energy that makes other people want to come work at your company.
Personality hires play an important role in building company culture, Bennett says. Daniel Bennett
Building relationships is extremely important in industries like entertainment, sales, and consulting. Making money often depends on how similar people are to each other.
In these industries, celebrity hires could provide more value than employees who simply do the actual work.
As a boss, I try to hire people with good personalities
After two years at TBWAChiatDay, I resigned and launched DX Creative, a social agency helping artists, celebrities and brands with short-form content and consulting, in 2021.
When I’m thinking about who to add to my team, I’m much more likely to make someone an offer if I like them.
Because we work directly with talent and celebrities, we need people who can be friends with them. It involves a lot of traveling, so imagine traveling with someone you don’t like. That would piss people off, so we need people who will vibe with the artist they’re working with.
We are looking for people with good personalities who can either learn in a very short time or have experience that we can tailor to our needs.
Ultimately, being a personality employee doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job; it just means that your personality helped you get hired.
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