In a recent interview, a candidate was just perfect, on paper.
We could not have hoped for better experience or credentials.
But when we gave her a follow-on request via HR to provide some written answers to a few technical answers, she replied that she had already discussed some of these answers in the interview itself and hence didn’t want to repeat herself 🤷
A couple of times during the interview too, she said some things that made it seem like attitude was an issue.
We discussed this later, and every person who interacted with her over the course of a few days felt the same way – that her attitude was a challenge.
The decision was unanimous. We can take someone who is not as good technically, but can surely be trained. But it would be disastrous to take someone who does not have EQ or DQ (remember?), because this mostly cannot be taught, and not at this age anyway.