'Coachability, curiosity, reliability, comfort asking for clarification'

In today's low-hire, low-fire job market, specific behavioral traits, as opposed to technical ones, might be more desirable. (Photo subject is a model.)

As AI changes what employers want in a candidate, one type of worker may have an edge - the personality hire.

A personality hire is generally thought of as someone who is valued for their charisma as much as, if not more than, their skills. They are perceived as contributing more to workplace culture than the company's bottom line.

In today's low-hire, low-fire job market, specific behavioral traits, as opposed to technical ones, might be more desirable - especially for younger Americans in entry-level jobs that traditionally did the more mundane work that can more easily be done by AI.

In June, the unemployment rate for all workers was 4.1%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For young Americans, though, the job landscape was much bleaker. Recent graduates and Americans between 22 and 27 face an unemployment rate of 5.7% and 7.2%, respectively.

AI hasn't made technical skills or experience irrelevant. But now, there is a "premium" on traits that may not have been as highly regarded before the advent of AI, says workplace-performance expert Henna Pryor.

Since AI can write everything from emails to code, companies are hiring for something called "social capability," she says, meaning they want to see how an employee acts when there is no playbook, when they have to be agreeable and adaptable.

Pryor points to behavioral traits including coachability, curiosity, reliability, comfort asking for clarification and the ability to repair a misstep. "None of this stuff was ever not important, it's just that now it's the most important," she says

Of course, it's always been the case that to stand out in the hiring process one needs to offer something that other job candidates don't. For previous cohorts, this meant having a perfect GPA, winning a prestigious award, or demonstrating the highest technical advancement.

Today, according to career experts, being an active listener or agreeable conversationalist might hold more weight, particularly in communicating ideas.

'Will this person ask a useful question?'

Return-to-office mandates also have hiring managers more focused on candidates' personalities. Companies are looking for employees who are willing to come into work five days a week. "It is more difficult to teach them the requisite skills from afar," New York Fed researchers noted.

Someone pleasant to be around, teachable, curious and adaptable might appeal more to a company only hiring for in-person roles.

Executives don't know how AI tools will evolve their business. Even if they themselves are cynical about AI's capabilities, they want job candidates who are willing to learn and discern, someone who exercises good judgment.

"When a hiring manager says they want personality, what they want to know is, in the moment when we need it, will this person ask a useful question?" Pryor says. "Can they read a room? Can they receive feedback?"

When there are unknowns about how an industry will metabolize certain technological changes, they want to hire someone who bounces back from mistakes and takes setbacks in stride.

But technical recruiter Farah Sharghi disagrees with the idea that personality is more important today than it was a decade ago. "Entry level is about curiosity and growth," she says.

Technical skills will always supersede whether someone is pleasant to work with, she says, and new graduates seeking employment should keep their focus on whether their background and experience make them a good fit for the role.

"All you need to do is figure out where the company's holes are and where your skills can fill them," she says.

Can you become more agreeable? Maybe.

Even if a worker believes interpersonal skills and character traits play a larger role in hiring decisions, it can be hard for them to know how to capitalize on them. Personality is often viewed as static. No matter how many cities visited, career paths pursued, or partners endured, a person's core traits remain the same. Or do they?

As personality science advances, researchers have found this isn't really the case.

For one year, author Olga Khazan attempted to change her personality - a journey she outlined in her book, "Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change."

She used the Big Five Personality model - a scientific model that says all people have some levels of extroversion (how sociable a person is), conscientiousness (how self-disciplined), agreeableness (how empathetic and cooperative), openness (how receptive one is to new ideas and activities) and neuroticism (how anxious).

The goal was to curb her depression and anxiety by increasing extroversion, agreeableness and openness.

Agreeableness, she found, was one of the more challenging traits to develop. This is because being agreeable, unlike other traits, requires a person to de-center themselves. "You're trying to tell yourself you should care about other people," Khazan says. "It involves a lot of perspective-taking, like what could be the reason someone is saying this or doing this?"

The way to increase extroversion, for example, is to join a team sport or attend more parties. Doing this allows a person to remain the main character. To be more agreeable, one needs to care about how actions affect others. For someone who does not value other people's comfort, it's hard to frame being agreeable as a valuable trait.

In one 2022 study, researchers explored whether increasing agreeableness would decrease levels of what is called the dark triad - or Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. The study finds that doing a nice thing for a friend or considering someone else's perspective increases agreeableness.

Or as Huffington Post columnist Kayla Chadwick writes: "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."

A personality hire, maybe to an outsized degree, naturally cares about making rooms better.

On TikTok, young people dubbed personality hires are pushing back against the narrative that they are employed despite lacking skills. In a video posted earlier this year, Avrial Barreto, a New York City-based client manager, says that being a personality hire simply means caring about others in the office.

"My goal is to be someone people are comfortable around and someone people want to work with," she says in her video, which currently has more than 32,000 likes.

With hiring managers prioritizing in-person work and AI able to tackle routine tasks that traditionally monopolized entry-level workers' time, one could argue being agreeable is paramount.

Yes, it's expected that a potential employee demonstrates the skills and experience to do a job. But if they are also the person who makes meetings less painful and teamwork less frustrating, they might have a better chance at nabbing that job.