They say good help is hard to find. Great help is even harder, but it’s worth the effort.

A rubric I was taught early in my career was to evaluate people for a role based on three axes: attitude, skills and knowledge.

That makes for an easy-to-remember acronym: ASK.

And hey, it even forms a triangle. I know you love those.

ASK isn’t just for evaluating candidates when hiring. It’s also useful when reviewing your team’s performance.

Here’s the short version: assess them on those three benchmarks.

• Attitude: Do they have a good one?
• Skills and knowledge: Do they have what they need?

Broadly speaking, skills and knowledge can be trained, developed and expanded. You can provide opportunities for career growth. But they have to have the right attitude — about the job, the training, the team.

Quick aside: You can’t necessarily create good attitudes, but as a boss you can absolutely create bad ones. Hiring people with good attitudes is pointless if your management style ruins them. Keep that in mind as you go about your day.

Back to attitude: It’s the old “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink” thing.

That’s why, if you’ve got a candidate who’s inexperienced or light on certifications, but they have the right outlook, you can work with that.

By the same token, if someone shows up with a long list of skills but is a terrible fit otherwise, those skills aren’t going to save them.

An old boss of mine once got frustrated after hiring several techs who all washed out before the 90-day mark.

That’s when he announced he didn’t care anymore about past work experience or industry certifications. He had a new filter in mind:

He was going to lock candidates in a boardroom with a stopwatch and a boxed piece of IKEA furniture.

And what was he testing for?

In his words: “I need to see with my own eyes that they can read a [expletive deleted] manual and follow simple instructions.”

He figured if someone couldn’t do that — and you’d be shocked how many can’t — they had no future as a technician.

Which brings me to a fourth attribute: talent.

Skills can be taught, and knowledge can be trained. But talent? You can’t create it. You can only recognize it, recruit it and harness it.

Long ago, I was a multi-store manager for Sunglass Hut. That’s not as glamorous as it sounds, but it was decent experience and paid better than you’d think.

At one location, I had a salesperson who was, for lack of a better word, a phenomenon. Or more accurately, a force of nature.

Whichever store she worked in was guaranteed to be the top-performing store in my region that day. She was a Closer, capital C.

Young guys would walk in to look at the $10 sunglasses on the rack by the door. She’d start talking to them, and before they knew it, they were walking out with a $400 pair of Oakleys, a hard-shell case, a cleaning kit and no idea what had just happened.

Sunglass Hut didn’t exactly have a rigorous training program, and I can’t take credit for her instincts. She was just like that.

Wherever she is today, in whatever field, I’m sure she’s still crushing it.