I had the pleasure of sitting in on an interview at work this week for a design position up in here.  I was surprised at how bored I was with all the qualifications and skills and experience.  The guy — who was fully qualified — showed almost no emotion until I asked him what he did outside of work.  After the perfectly valid but cheap answers (spend time with kids, reading, blah blah blah), he finally opened up about his Xbox and the Batman and Call of Duty games that were keeping him busy.  His smile finally crept in, and he said, “those are my only vices.”

I had a religious mentor once who said the only sins he had problems with were his favorite ones.  Although the opposite of virtue, vice doesn’t always have to be a sin, but it does have to be your favorite. A vice can also be defined as simply a flaw or weakness, a chink in one’s armor, a frailty.   Sin or not, vices are guilty pleasures, and while we all have proficiencies, we all also have little vices that keep us smiling.

Vices tell a lot more about you than your virtues.  Vices are enjoyable.  Virtues are work, a struggle.  Vices are what you’d rather be doing.  Even when you’re full of virtues, skills, experiences, I want to know which vices you gave up for those virtues.

It all adds up to an honest look at who you are, what fuels you, what recharges you, and what ultimately defines you.   And there’s not a better predictor of compatibility inside or outside the workplace than your nice list of secret vices.