Why Your Client Might Love Your Introverted Candidates

Introverts often get a bad wrap in the employment world, with popular stereotypes insisting that introverts are unsociable, shy, aloof, and pathologically averse to working in groups.

Hmmm. With 50% of the human population falling predominantly on the introverted side of the spectrum, does this really mean that fully half of us are shy, unsociable, and terrible team players?

Well, of course not! No workplace or community could even function if one in two people were so terribly anti-social.  So there’s obviously something very wrong with the way we think about introverts. And when we consider that introverts get badly discriminated against in interviews because of these outdated stereotypes, it becomes very apparent that we’re missing a trick here.

The truth is, introverts are just as good candidates as extroverts, and as it happens, a lot better at certain things. When you look at it closely, you realise there are loads of reasons why your client might actually prefer an introverted candidate.

So what are introverts and extroverts?

The popular understanding is that extroverts gain their energy from interacting with others, while introverts are drained of energy by interacting with others. There’s the first problem: this isn’t exactly true.

It’s been proven that both introverts and extroverts gain energy from interacting with people and situations. The difference is that an introvert will find the noise and bustle of such interactions ultimately tiring and will need time on their own afterwards.

Why should your client love introverts?

1. They listen.

Extroverts often dominate conversation, where introverts are famously good listeners. They don’t like hogging the spotlight, so they free up space for others to speak and share ideas.  This is one of the many reasons that extroverts make good managers: they allow others to shine. They’re also good at receiving feedback.

2. They’re intrinsically motivated, not extrinsically.

Even if they’ve met the targets or got their bonus they’ll still keep trying to meet their own personal standards. Now that’s a powerful attribute.

3. Introverts often outperform extroverts over time.

Extroverts often shine in groups at first due to their confidence and big personalities, but as the shine wears off they often fail to perform to the high expectations of their arrival, and their status in the group declines. Introverts, on the other hand, tend to generate low expectations and have comparably low status when they join an employer because they tend to undersell themselves in interviews, but their performance and status tend to rise over time.

4. They love planning and detail.

Introverts will plan towards success, rather than ‘wing it’, and have very good risk assessment capabilities.

5. They are humble.

Introverts are generally more aware of their limitations, and they don’t like to boast.  You won’t get empty promises with an introvert, or wild unsubstantiated claims about the results they’ll get.

6. They think before they speak.

It’s a real attribute to pause to think before acting in pressure situations. For an introvert, this careful consideration comes naturally-another reason why introverts make good managers.

7. They are ultra-focussed and find the flow in their work.

No half-finished jobs for introverts, or skipping from task to task, or trips back out to the tea room for a chat every time they get bored or lonely.  You want a job done quickly and with great attention to detail? Give it to an introvert in a quiet room!

8. Their great ideas are often greater.

Because introverts can spend hours solely focussed on one task, the chances of them hitting on a great idea is better. The deeper we go into a task, the more we connect with it—and the more brilliant ideas come forth. Albert Einstein, a well-known introvert, claimed ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s that I stay with problems longer’.

9. Introverts have high-quality networks.

Extroverts might have larger networks by numbers, but introverts generally have better-quality networks made up of solid relationships. This may be the reason that introverts often outperform extroverts in sales.

Introverts and extroverts both have their fantastic qualities in the workplace, but introverts have long been selected against by hiring managers and recruiters. We need to urgently update our preconceptions of introverts and embrace their many strengths if we want our teams, our clients, and our businesses to succeed.

Until next time

Cheryl