By Ringside Talent
October 5, 2016
While interviewers understandably place a large emphasis on whether the candidate has the skills to do a job, putting energy into attracting candidates who will love the job is just as important.
Here are 5 tips on how to reveal a job candidate’s motivation:
1. Uncovering motivation
Candidates will often only assess how motivated they actually are about the role when they have an offer in hand. For that reason, the interviewer must try to get at motivations to determine if the candidate will love the job and play a positive part in building the corporate culture.
2. Questions to ask
The trick to asking a candidate about their motivations is to word questions to limit how much you show your hand. This will help ensure a genuine response. Asking about motivations directly may elicit more the response the candidate thinks you want to hear.
Take a close look for patterns and trends. These themes will provide a sense for what motivates the candidate.
3. Work history
Now that you have the answers to the interview questions, go back to the candidate’s resume. If they stayed with employers for long tenures, were they consistently promoted to more responsible roles? If they had shorter tenures, did they make moves for advancement opportunities or for other reasons? Have they ever been rehired by a former boss who moved to a new company?
4. Outside interests
With executive candidates, you will often spend some time in social company at dinner or at least at lunch during the interview process. These situations allow you to learn what the candidate is interested in personally, what their hobbies are, and how they spend time when they are not at work.
5. Off-the-record references
With social media, especially LinkedIn, it has never been easier to determine who you know that also knows the candidate. Simply connect to the candidate and determine who you both know in common. Ask these people what they know about the candidate’s motivations.
Whether the candidate loves the job or not is crucial to retention, engagement, and positive contributions to the corporate culture. While it can be difficult to uncover during the interview process, ultimately the effort you put into uncovering what motivates the candidate will result in a job offer that benefits both the candidate and your company.
Source: Columbus Business First written by Laura Fries