Bar Science / Hire the Personality, Teach the Skill
Eight Adjectives Before You Interview Anyone
By Bar Rescue Review · November 9, 2026
Attitude can’t be trained, so hire for it: the Eight Adjective Answer, conversations instead of interviews, and managing for champions.
Principle 9 of 10 — Hire the Personality, Teach the Skill
“Training is behavior modification. All we can do is teach the people we hire about our business.”
Jon Taffer — 2012 Nightclub & Bar Show keynote, via Bar & Restaurant
You cannot train attitude, so hire for it and teach the rest. His hiring method from the same keynote: the Eight Adjective Answer — write eight adjectives describing the person each open role needs, then hold conversations, not interviews, to find people who embody them. Raise the Bar makes the same argument (paraphrase, per book summaries): traditional hiring over-weights industry familiarity and under-weights the personality traits that drive customer reactions. And manage the people you have toward the standard — the keynote’s phrase is “manage for champions”. Drink specs and service steps are teachable in days; warmth, urgency, honesty and composure under load are traits, not curricula — and since the product is the guest’s reaction (Principle 2), the people producing reactions are the product’s main ingredient.
The interview instrument: candidates describe themselves, and the pattern in the adjectives is the attitude signal.
Apply it this week
Before your next hire, write the eight adjectives for the role. If you can’t, you’re not ready to interview.
Replace the interview with a conversation and a working trial: watch how the candidate treats the busser, not how they answer you.
Write your drink specs and service steps down — “teaching” only works if there’s a document to teach from.
Set one timed, observable standard per role — a signature cocktail built to spec in 45 seconds or less, at volume — and coach to it.
When someone fails, diagnose trait vs. training honestly: re-teach the trained, exit the trait — quickly and kindly.
The teaching doctrine with the volume up: hospitality students, not pros, brought to a working standard for a real event. Mixologist Brian Van Flandern’s target was each cocktail built in 45 seconds or less, and the recap notes his framing to the students: how you react to pressure is what defines you as a professional.
The corollary from the other side: the cook’s skill gaps were explicitly forgiven — he had not been trained and did not know better — but when confronted about the state of the kitchen he didn’t take it seriously, and was let go. Per the episode recap, Taffer’s stated condition is that he can fix and train, only if the person cares.
Part of Bar Science — the ten principles behind Bar Rescue, each sourced and tested against the tracked outcomes of the bars it was applied to. Bar Rescue Review is an independent fan project and is not affiliated with Paramount Network, Spike TV or Jon Taffer.
