Agia Projects specialises in project management and head contracting for high end residential and commercial projects.

Target Candidate:

Emotional intelligence, initiative, passion, and a desire to develop are qualities Athan Giannikos, Managing Director of Agia Projects, looks for when hiring new team members. He believes that if he finds candidates with all of these qualities, Agia Products will end up with employees with really well rounded personalities who can deal effectively with clients and get things done.

Attraction and Retention Challenges and Goals:

Giannikos explained that he decided to make the switch to ‘hire for attitude and train for skill’ after he had taken on some people who ended up being false starters. He said that he has found that staff members with years of experience can also ‘lack energy and real drive.’ Although experienced staff may know about the industry, the terminology, and the dynamics of the company, these are things that can easily be learned by less experienced but more enthusiastic team members.

How Rookie Recruits Help Overcome Challenges and Meet Goals:

Giannikos thought the time and expense to train inexperienced team members would outweigh the benefits. Now he says, “By finding the right staff [attitude wise] they are clever enough to be able to work it [the role] out . . . The time spent on training has actually been far less than I would have expected.” He said that when it came down to it, he actually spent less time training people who had the enthusiasm and the drive to learn than he spent with the experienced, but less committed, false starters that he let go. Rookie Recruits’ screening of candidates before referring them to Agia Products aligned the attitudinal requirements of the candidates with those required of the company, thus saving time and energy in the training of those candidates.

Return on Investment:

Giannikos, with the help of Rookie Recruits, has happily made the process of hiring for attitude and then training for skills his new ethos when finding great new team members. He said, “It has been well worth it to hire for attitude – commercially, and for all other reasons. Everything has been improved by it.”With its screening process, Rookie Recruits helped Agia Projects develop a great way of determining which aspects of the ‘attitude’ versus the ‘skills’ characteristics were applicable when hiring new team members.”