This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Daniel Bennett, the 28-year-old founder of DX Creative, a social consulting agency, and a former advertising account manager. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I was a “personality hire.”
When I was interviewing for my first corporate job at a giant advertising agency in LA called TBWAChiatDay, my goal going into it was to make the interviewers like me — that was it.
I wasn’t there to impress them or show them that I could learn or whatever. I thought, “If I can make them laugh and smile and have a good time, that’s going to be more memorable than someone who can recite all of their accolades.”
Because it was an ad agency in LA, 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, “Yeah, I was taking warmup shots for this interview before you guys came. Am I sweaty?” They loved that; they were laughing their asses off.
I ended up beating out two people with three or four years of experience, even though I had zero experience.
Difference between a personality hire and a good personality.
There’s a difference between a personality hire and someone who just has a good personality.
Imagine walking into work with your coffee, and the personality hire says, “You’re never going to guess who I ran into this weekend!”
A normal person might keep that information to themselves, but a personality hire will want to entertain the office with their hilarious story of running into an ex.
We can get away with doing less work
As a personality hire, you can get away with not being as competent and doing half of your job. (I’m not that kind of person, but there are personality hires like that.)
Does that mean that someone else picks up the slack? Probably. But that’s up to the company’s discretion to decide whether they keep you.
There are certain people who perhaps don’t crush tests or can’t build a marketing rollout but are very successful in their roles because they’re street smart. Maybe a personality hire has a lot of connections and always “knows a guy” who can get you into a restaurant that’s booked out for six months, which could result in closing a deal. But maybe that person doesn’t know how to write a brief.
Those “know a guy” skills really come in handy with careers that are built around relationship management, which is more meaningful than being good at sending emails.
Still, if you’re just a personality hire and do absolutely no work, you will get fired.
Despite being a personality hire, I still worked hard; I worked 60 hours a week and was up until 1 a.m. so we could finish a commercial.
In those instances, personality hires’ positive attitudes help. Cracking jokes with your coworkers at 1 a.m. on a deadline makes it much more bearable than everyone being miserable.
Being a personality hire allowed me to call in favors
In the office, I was the one who said, “Guys, we have an hour in between meetings. Let’s go walk and get lunch!” Or “Let’s go grab a smoothie.” Or, “This place is having happy hour after work. 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 grunt work, like organizing files and picking up hard drives.
But I was always good at walking around the office and talking to different people to build relationships; instead of sending a Slack message or an email, I would go up and ask them.
I’ve always thought that if I need a favor from someone, they’re way more likely to help me out if I’ve gone up to them and said hi, rather than just sent them an email and never talked to them.
The world runs on favors, and you don’t do favors for people that you don’t like.
If I needed a quick edit on a design or a billboard, I could call in a favor to a designer, and they’d be willing to work with me on it on a tight deadline.
Companies need personality hires to build their company culture
Companies that take pride in having “disruptive” and different work cultures need personality hires because otherwise, who’s going to build that culture?
It may be controversial to say, but employees without outgoing personalities aren’t going to build your company culture — non-personality hires aren’t as fun at parties and don’t provide office gossip. For Gen Zs and millennials, there are other motivators for going to work than just doing the work.
Personality hires can also help companies attract good talent by providing the energy that makes other people want to come work at your company.
Relationship-building is extremely important in industries such as entertainment, sales, and consulting. Making money is often dependent on people having a mutual likeness.
In these industries, personality hires could bring more value than employees who just do the actual work.
As a boss, I try to hire people with good personalities
After two years at TBWAChiatDay, I quit and went on to launch DX Creative, a social agency helping artists, celebrities, and brands with short-form content and consulting, in 2021.
When I’m considering who to bring onto my team, I’m way more likely to extend an offer to someone if I like them.
Because we work directly with talent and celebrities, we need people who can be friends with them. There’s a lot of travel involved, so imagine traveling with someone that you don’t like. That would piss people off, so we need people who will vibe with the artist they’re working with.
We look for people with good personalities who either can be taught in a very short time or have the experience we can mold into what we need.
Ultimately, being a personality hire doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job; it just means your personality helped you get hired.
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