Attitude Over Skills
Hire the attitude; the skills you can teach.
Repole hires for attitude first because skills are teachable and attitude isn't. He screens for type-A, hyper-competitive 'sore losers' — often ex-athletes — using a deliberately provocative interview probe ('Do you like to lose?'). Candidates who give the political, self-help answer are passed over; the ones who flinch at the memory of a loss reveal the intensity he wants. The rule is explicitly 'attitude OVER skills,' not 'attitude, no skills.'
- Skills are teachable; attitude is not — so select on the thing you can't install.
- Hire sore losers, not people who 'learned a lesson' from losing.
- Ex-athletes carry competitive intensity and team chemistry into business.
- Attitude over skills means BOTH — great attitude AND great skills, ranked in that order.
Repole describes interviewing a candidate at Vitaminwater 15 years earlier: he asked if she'd won a state championship, saw her face tighten, and she told him she lost the title 1-0 on the only goal she conceded all year. He hired her on that intensity; she is now CMO of a major company.