What types of concrete traits/habits do you look for in a candidate? Do you have any examples of traits/habits that wouldn't fit in the with your team, company and clients?
A lot of the candidates we’ve interviewed just don’t have the experience working in that sort of environment. We don’t have time to write code perfectly at the moment with pairing, full test coverage, fully TDD, etc. Yes people can learn this, but if you come across as someone who will just spend all day conplaining about that I don’t want you on the team.
Another thing is simple skills like turning up on time. We recently had a couple of on-site interviews (after phone calls) where the candidates turned up more than 30 minutes late, with no good excuse.
This alone may not dissuade me from hiring someone, but things like this add up in the negatives column.