Do you play well with others? You're hired!

updated 5:19 p.m. ET Nov. 5, 2007

NEW YORK - A resume and a brief job interview can’t answer the question that matters most to a new hire’s co-workers: Is this person an absolute pain?

Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employers are pickier than ever about whom they hire. Businesses in fields where jobs are highly coveted — or just sound like fun — are stepping up efforts to weed out people who might have the right credentials but the wrong personality.

Call it the “plays well with others” factor.

Job candidates at investment banks have long endured dozens of interviews designed, in part, to see if new hires will get along with everyone they’ll work with. Whole Foods Market Inc. holds group interviews, in which people who will work under a manager are part of the team that grills candidates and collectively picks hires.

Now other companies are setting up higher hurdles.

“In this bloggable, cell phone camera world, your brand on the inside is going to be your brand on the outside. If you have a bunch of jerks, your brand is going to be a jerk,” said Tim Sanders, former leadership coach at Yahoo Inc. and author of “The Likeability Factor.”

With the national unemployment rate low, at 4.7 percent, and the Baby Boom generation heading into retirement, employers from Microsoft Corp. to rural hospitals are worrying about finding enough workers. But companies like Rackspace Managed Hosting are bucking that trend, working hard to find reasons to turn people away.

Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said, “We’d rather miss a good one than hire a bad one.”

The 1,900-person computer server hosting company is divided into 18- to 20-person teams. One team is so close, the whole group shows up to help when one member moves into a new home, Napier said. Job interviews at the San Antonio-based company last all day, as interviewers try to rub away fake pleasantness.

“They’re here for nine or 10 hours,” Napier said. “We’re very cordial about it. We’re not aggressive, but we haven’t met a human being yet who has the stamina to BS us all day.”

There’s a possible downside, however. In a Harvard Business Review article titled “Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?” Tiziana Casciaro of Harvard and Miguel Sousa Lobo of Duke University point out that people generally like people who are similar to them, so hiring for congeniality can limit diversity of opinions. One venture capitalist told the authors that a capable manager he worked with built a team that “had a great time going out for a beer, but the quality of their work was seriously compromised.”

That’s not the worry at Lindblad Expeditions, a 500-employee adventure cruise company.

Kris Thompson, vice president of human resources at Lindblad, said, “You can teach people any technical skill, but you can’t teach them how to be a kindhearted, generous-minded person with an open spirit.”

In the mating dance of job interviews, employers traditionally put their best feet forward, too, trumpeting their wonderful benefits packages while leaving out the bit about working late, eating cold pizza.

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