Today’s recruiters take personal characteristics more seriously than ever as skills and experience are no longer enough. Companies are always on the look for people with the right personalities. While hard skills can be easily measured, personality is much more difficult to identify. Directly or indirectly, the personal traits of your employees can have a major impact on the efficiency and productivity of your company. While some of those traits might seem to be great, they can turn ugly on the long run. While diversity in hiring is important to building a great team, there are some personal characteristics that can seem to be great on paper when in fact; they can have a negative effect on your team’s productivity. Akhtaboot reveals some good career traits that can actually be bad.

Being Too Secretive

While maintaining privacy of information might seem like a good thing, being too secretive can be a sign that your employee has trust issues. Information hoarding can be a result of personal insecurity or from past dealings with unethical or discriminatory management. It should be a leader’s top priority to resolve this trait and discover the root cause of it. Make sure that you recognized collaborative results and not just individual achievements and ensure that all members know that team success is a top priority.

Excessive Multitasking

Multitasking is also a skill that most companies require when hiring candidates. However, studies have revealed that multitasking does not only reduce productivity, but it also makes us work less efficiently and leaves you more susceptible to making mistakes. While it might seem easy to do two routine tasks at the same time, doing two tasks that are both complex, will push your brain to work harder and can have a long term effect on your memory. Don’t try to achieve multiple goals simultaneously. The key is to know when to slow down.  You need to focus on the heavy tasks that need your undivided attention first, and then you go back to juggling your other day-to-day tasks.

Being a Perfectionist

Being a perfectionist might seem like a good quality to have, but once it starts hindering the flow of work, this is when it becomes unhealthy. When perfection becomes the only accepted standard at your company, you are placing unnecessary pressure on your people. You stand in the way of them trying new things, taking risks, and making mistakes.

Saying Yes to Everything

Many of us are stuck in time consuming tasks simply because we’ve agreed to do them. But once you have too much on your plate, you need to learn when to say no. While being too agreeable might seem like a good trait to have, learning to say no to certain requests when you’re feeling overwhelmed is essential to your career development. When you’re faced with a request, make sure that you weigh in the benefits and costs before committing to it to make sure that you don’t compromise your own priorities.