So I asked about this the other day on LinkedIn:

What do you look for in an intern or someone who's in their first job? Increasingly, I tend to ask applicants what their 'superpowers' are. I listen to them while they list their best qualities. And then I say, "we only need 3 superpowers—reliability, communicativeness and hard work."

My point is that these are very basic, but actually really hard to instill. Hard skills, while difficult to master, are actually more easily teachable.

I got several replies: Patience, openness to learning, ability to un-learn and re-learn. Ability to hustle. Can-do spirit.

And then one reply that took my breath away: "Courage to go against the flow if it is a gut feeling one can't ignore." This, from Sanghamitra Mandal. To which I replied, "Wow. I find very few people who can do this. I have been trying myself and slowly learning to do better with this."

My next question would be: all these are great to start with. But how do you test for these qualities when you're hiring? To me, the answer to that lies in the apprenticeship model that many of us use. Hire someone for pay. Work with them for a few months to see for yourself. And then hire them fully.
In real life, people are exploited with this model. But if we stripped away all inequalities and disadvantages from this model, I think we'd be in a good position to hire the best-suited people.

Note I didn't say 'best' people, but best-suited.