There are a lot of articles swirling around in the ether at the moment calling out the communications industry – particularly the digital shops – for refusing to hire anyone but the young. Ageism has been declared digital’s latest trend.

Step right up digital natives! You’ve known how it works from the second you were born. Congrats and welcome aboard. You’ve just turned 30? Sorry to hear that old fella. Someone – please help this man across the road!

It’s made me reflect on my own selection process and, dare I say it, prejudices. What exactly do I look for, to give me the best chance of the right hire?

 Whether I’m throwing wads of hard earned company profit at a recruiter, or wading through a similarly sized wad of SEEK applicants, I have realised there are  three attitudinal advantages I consistently look out for:

ONE: values and brand alignment

Will you thrive within our culture? Will you embrace it without cynicism and behave as we behave – with integrity, authenticity and joy? If our values don’t align, our paths won't either… not for long anyway.

TWO: curiosity

Are you fascinated in people and how they interact with brands? Do you feel blessed to have stumbled into a career where you’re always learning, always inventing and often making your way back to base camp at night without a torch? You can know your stuff, but if you know it all you’re a know it all. And no one wants to work with one of those for long.

 THREE: ownership

The perfect brief doesn’t exist. The perfect workload doesn’t exist. The perfect budget doesn’t exist. And people? Don't get me started on how quirky they can be! If you own the problem, you’re far more likely to own the solution too. If it’s not your problem, that makes it mine. Which will make you a problem too, eventually.

One of our longest serving radiators paid off her student loan a few years ago. Finally. The accountant gave her a shout out - "Well done, you're free"or words to that effect.  Oh, I chirped, what did you study? Marketing apparently. I suppose it was on her CV when I hired her 12 years earlier. But it was the three attitudinal advantages that got her the epic gig.