The 10/3 vs 6/9.5: Your Values-Clarity Problem Is Costing You a Culture Tax

Here's a hiring riddle for you: Would you rather bring on a 10/3 or a 6/9.5? That's a candidate with elite skills but lousy value alignment versus someone with solid skills and an exceptional value fit. If you said 6/9.5, congratulations, you just failed the test most organizations are actually running. In 2025, about 85% of employers say they're using skills-based hiring, and they'll report better performance and stronger retention as a result.

But here's what the research quietly admits: according to Cangrade's (https://www.cangrade.com/blog/talent-acquisition/how-values-based-hiring-attracts-top-talent/) analysis of values-based hiring, leaders get the best outcomes when they evaluate the "whole candidate,” skills plus personality and cultural alignment, not skills alone. We're living through a moment where AI is accelerating skill obsolescence faster than ever. Yet, we're doubling down on hiring for the thing that changes fastest while ignoring the thing that matters most: whether someone will show up the way you need them to when the skills they walked in with are already half-obsolete by Thursday.

So, what's the real cost of hiring that brilliant 10/3? The research is brutally clear: when values don't align, disengagement, friction, and turnover costs rise quickly. Studies show that employees whose values clash with their organization's report significantly higher stress and demotivation, and they're far more likely to leave, even if their technical performance looks fine on paper.

Meanwhile, values-aligned employees stick around longer, collaborate more effectively, and actually identify with your mission rather than tolerate it for a paycheck. Here's the part that should make every owner and HR leader wince: that technically perfect but values-mismatched hire doesn't just underperform individually, they quietly erode team cohesion, slow execution, and create a leadership tax where managers spend more time managing around the person than benefiting from their skills. You hired a 10, but you're paying a cultural premium that never showed up in the job posting.

Now flip the equation and look at your 6/9.5 hire. Yes, they might need more coaching upfront. Yes, their resume might not dazzle at first glance. But here's what you're getting: someone who will run toward your problems instead of around them, someone your team will want to work with instead of route around, and someone who's coachable precisely because they share the values that make coaching stick.

And here's the kicker: a recent CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/14/ai-to-impact-89percent-of-jobs-next-year-cnbc-survey-finds.html)  survey found that 89% of HR leaders expect AI to impact jobs in 2026, not by eliminating roles wholesale, but by redistributing tasks within them.

Meanwhile, McKinsey's research shows that employees are already adopting AI tools at roughly three times the rate their managers assume. (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/week-in-charts/leaders-underestimate-employees-ai-use)  Translation: the skills you're hiring for today are being rewritten in real-time, often by the people you already employ. So, the real question isn't "what can they do today?" It's "what will they choose to learn and become with us tomorrow?" Skills are increasingly rentable, trainable, and AI-augmentable. Values? Those travel with the person, shape every decision under pressure, and determine whether someone becomes a culture amplifier or a culture tax.

So here's your litmus test before your next hire: Can you articulate what you truly value? Does your mission statement say it in plain language, the kind people can recite from memory because it's the mantra everyone actually lives by? Because if your values are buried in consultant-speak or so vague that nobody could screen a candidate against them, you're defaulting to skills-first hiring by accident, not by strategy. And that means you're building a team optimized for a world that's already disappearing while ignoring the one variable that determines whether people will execute when the org chart shifts, the tools change, and the plan you wrote in January is obsolete by March.

Skills determine what someone can do. Values determine what they will do for you and your people under pressure. The companies that figure this out won't just survive the AI reshaping of work; they'll use it as an accelerant. The ones who don't? They'll keep wondering why their highly skilled teams can't seem to execute, even when the system is theoretically sound. You don't have a skills problem. You have a values-clarity problem. And no amount of AI, EOS, or skills-based hiring will fix what you haven't defined.