Hiring on Skills, Attributes, and Values
Evaluate people in three dimensions — skills, attributes, and values — not skills alone, which is only ~50% predictive.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
A talent-evaluation model Udezue took from Bridgewater Associates: assess people across three dimensions rather than one. Skills are the craft; attributes are personality and proclivity (bold vs. timid, jump-in vs. stand-back); values are character (principled vs. a thief). Most organizations, including famously Google's skill-based interviews, evaluate only skills — which Udezue notes was only about 50% predictive — and miss the other two dimensions that determine real fit and success.
Origin
Learned by Oji Udezue at Bridgewater Associates, where he was a Senior Management Associate (SMA); he credits Ray Dalio's system for the three-dimensional view of people, while noting Bridgewater's execution could be unempathetic.
Core principles
- 01People have three dimensions: skills, attributes, and values
- 02Skills are craft; attributes are personality/proclivity; values are character
- 03Most organizations evaluate only skills
- 04Skill-based interviewing alone is roughly 50% predictive
- 05Writing roles around attributes and values, not just skills, improves hiring success
How to run it
- 1
Separate the three dimensions explicitly
When assessing a person, distinguish their skills (craft), their attributes (bold/timid, jump-in/stand-back), and their values (principled vs. not).
- 2
Write job descriptions that name attributes and values
Specify the attributes and values you're looking for in the role, not only the skills — Bridgewater wrote descriptions that stated the kind of attributes sought.
- 3
Interview to extract all three
In interviews, deliberately probe for attributes and values alongside skills. Udezue asks candidates to introduce themselves, then what they're truly great at, then what they need to learn.
Pro tip How a candidate introduces themselves and the content of it reveals a lot about communication, thoughtfulness, and what they're proud of.
- 4
Apply it in professional and personal life
Use the three-dimensional lens beyond hiring — Udezue reports it became a major addition to how he sees people generally.
Watch out Don't copy Bridgewater's execution wholesale — Udezue found practices like real-time public rating emotionally exhausting and unempathetic even where the underlying theory was sound; expecting humans to behave like computers backfires.
In the wild
At Bridgewater, people were assessed on skills, attributes, and values, and job descriptions were written to specify the attributes sought, not just the skills. Udezue calls this a huge addition to him as a professional that he learned nowhere else.
→ A richer, more predictive way of evaluating and placing people than skills-only assessment.
Udezue cites Google's famously skill-based interviewing as only about 50% predictive, attributing the gap to Google not considering attributes and values.
→ Illustrates why skills-only evaluation systematically under-predicts real-world performance and fit.
Common mistakes
Evaluating candidates on skills alone
Judging people only on craft ignores attributes and values, leaving hiring roughly 50% predictive — you miss whether the person is bold or timid, principled or not, which drives actual success.
Copying a rigorous system's execution without empathy
Bridgewater's theory was strong but its execution (real-time public rating, treating humans like computers) was exhausting and unempathetic. Adopting the mechanics without adapting them to human reality damages the team even when the underlying idea is right.
Is it for you?
Best for
Managers and founders designing interview processes and job descriptions who want to hire beyond raw skill.
Not ideal for
Purely mechanical or short-term contract roles where craft output is the only thing that matters, or cultures unwilling to adapt heavyweight assessment humanely.
From the transcript
“Bridgewater thinks of people in three dimensions their skills of their attributes and their values most organizations think about people in terms of just their…”
“tries to write job descriptions that say this is the kind of attributes we're looking for not just the skills”
“the famously like all the weird skill based interviewing at Google was only 50 you know 50 50 predictive and the reason is Google did…”
From the episode
Picking sharp problems, increasing virality, and unique product frameworks
Oji Udezue (Typeform, Twitter, Calendly, Atlassian)