Fool Vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?

A Brief Synopsis

There is one on every job. There is the competent jerk, the lovable fool, the lovable star and the incompetent jerk. Sometimes we work directly with the archetypes, other times, we just hear the stories about their performance or attitude. Every day, managers are faced with the daunting task of choosing one of these employee types during the hiring process. Sometimes the decision is a no-brainer, other times is involves choosing the lesser of the evils. The Harvard Business School journal, Working Knowledge, offers some answers based on a study conducted by Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo.
Tiziana Casciaro is a professor at Harvard Business School while Miguel Sousa Lobo is a professor at Duke University. In an article entitled, “Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?” Casciaro and Lobo revealed the findings of their study in which they examined four different organizations that they felt would represent a vast range of attributes including large corporations and small businesses, for-profit and non-profit and North American companies and European companies. Within these businesses, they asked each employee how often they interacted with each of the other employees. They then asked the employees to rate all the other employees according to how much they liked them on a personal level and how well they did their job.

These questions were directed to the employees in order to identify which work/personality style each employee fit into in his or her job. They broke the work/personality styles down into four categories: the competent jerk, the lovable fool, the lovable star and the incompetent jerk. The competent jerk is an employee who is good at his or her job, but is not pleasant to interact with or be around. The lovable fool is a joy to be around, but not very bright or good at his or her job. The lovable star is both pleasant to be around and very good at his or her job. The incompetent jerk is pretty self explanatory, unpleasant and incompetent.