Hiring the Good Employees

I am not the manager.  I am not the supervisor.  But I've seen quite a few tellers come and go during the months I've spent at my job.  Some went on to promotions.  Some quit.  Some lost their job.  And I've noticed a pattern.

There is an indefinable, unpinpointable characteristic that distinguishes the good employees from the bad.  And it's got something to do with compassion for others. 

Employees can put on a show about being polite, but for some of them the politeness comes with relatively little effort because of the concern they have for helping the other guy.

Employees can be hard workers because they know the boss will smile upon them for it, but if their hard work is done only to earn the boss's favor, it's hard to keep up the effort when he's not looking.   Others work hard because it's part of their desire to help their customers and their co-workers. 

Employees can complain behind the backs of the nasty customers, but then their crabby rebuttals [spoken surreptitiously to co-workers] affect their attitude so that it oozes out around the edges to all the customers.  Others understand that a rude customer may be "rude" simply because she didn't hear the cheery greeting to give a pleasant response, or because something tragic is going on his life.

Most people who are looking for jobs these days must apply online.  Sometimes hundreds of people apply for a handful of jobs.  There is no way for an employer to get that "feel" for what the prospective employee is like, to assess those indefinable "vibes."  And there is no way for the guy who's job-hunting to be able to "sell" himself on the basis of that most-important quality.  That's hard for the guy who needs a job.  But it's also a difficulty for the person who's doing the hiring.  I'm beginning more and more to think that, if I'm ever in a position of making hiring-decisions, my gut-level intuition should have a lot more clout than my reason and logic.