Who would you hire - a "Genius" with attitude problems, or an average individual who is compliant? (Assuming both take the same salaries)

If it is on project basis, time-bound then the genius.
Otherwise for full time basis the average person.

The Genius with attitude problem can't work on the first front, He may give a bad picture to the customers, So I can hire him on a department that don't need to deal with customers.
The other one I can hire after training to make sure of his limits, May he exceed what I've expected.

My preference is the one who is compliant.  You know he will come to work everyday and put in a full honest days work.  The Genius would create an atmosphere, resentment and be an admin burden.

- I'm will hire "a genius" to that with the proper training and the proper development of the skills of the organization will benefit from this genius dramatically - The average person will do his work properly but can not offer anything new and can not creativity in thinking "It's easy, we find average people ...
but it is difficult to find geniuses"

'Genius' comes with its baggage for sure but if the individual is given the right positioning within the organization which lets the 'Genius' flourish -the organization can benefit immensely from that.
All organizations need a right mix of individuals - if all are compliant then the organization too will be an average organization.
I'd like to point out that most self made Heads of organizations are eccentric geniuses - that is what helped them visualize-create and build an organization.They believe in non-conformity.
Eg: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs....
Also it depends on the definition of 'Attitude' - I've had cases where a candidate was rejected just because he/she asked pertinent questions during the interview which intimidated the interviewer and the feedback was - 'Attitude Issue' - this is when the recruiter should push back and find out what the root cause was for the candidate to be classified with 'Attitude Issue'.

Average individual with good atittude  

^ Operator,Perhaps this is one of the most intelligent question ever asked to the professional-mankind. I also happen to find this extremely hard to choose. Whilst both of these demarcs do have their own potential | advantages, I believe both can very well fit. With of course, the slight modification on where and how these entities are placed.I would like to share you one of my errands dealing with one of the 'genius' we hired for a project. Now, this guy was, um, how do I put it, a pain to deal with. But, of course, with benefit. Genius is itself a state of mind, tuned and designed to work on a specific set of subject. It is also to be known that a person who is an expert upon a subject tend to be slightly 'skewed' than normal individuals. For instance, my guy, a C programming language genius used to sit aloof in a room, doing lots of maths; but with a sucky attitude whilst faced in front of customer. That's the analytic part of him, not a social one.While you have your job pertaining hire an expert, not to deep and dense, you could then hire these semi-experts on the subject. The moral - you put your genius at back-end, while you keep your big-mouth at front. An irony, I must add.But again, this is one of the 'best-fit' game.

 

Cheers! 

An attitude is never a problem as it depends on person to person. A Genius to hire for a role should also be such which requires too analytical, in depth research or SLA to be met. A proper guidance during the training would definitely help the Genius to control his attitude and throw it at a right place (In today's work environment sometimes you need to do this).

An average candidate with basic skills is always a good choice to hire as they can be mould as per your requirement. Further Trainings and proper guidance will always help him/her to perform better than his capabilities. (As per the compliant which is mentioned in the above question).

 

Therefore both candidates has its positive and less positive clauses. You can conduct the Behavioural Ethics Based interview for both, which will help you to understand the candidate right in terms of Knowledge, behaviour and some average IQ test. This will lead to offer the same salary for both type of Individuals as well.

Shortly and effectively skills can always be developed by trainings and experience, however attitude issues is much harder to change as well as until behaviour change sometimes it causes damages especially if its team work( the case in almost all jobs) that can hardly be fixed and until then losses can be heartfull to the buisness