Hiring with Candidate Motivations and Attitudes in Mind

Hiring the traditional route by using just a resume and interview are quickly becoming archaic. It is time to give hiring for your team the importance it deserves…and it is easier than you think.

When looking to hire, look at the motivations of that new hire. Motivations are a critical element to hiring in today’s labor market. By digging deep and looking at what drives employees, you find attitudes and not just skills. You’re looking for a can-do attitude. You want someone who is optimistic and willing to take on challenges.

You also need motivations that match a job. Let me explain what I mean—while optimism, a positive attitude and go-getter mentality likely fits the corporate culture of many of the most successful and highly performing organizations out there (and hopefully yours), every job in those organizations needs even more specificity.

You’re hiring a programmer—what do you truly need a person to be motivated by in order to perform well?

How about a motivation for problem solving? Most likely, yes. What about attention to detail? Your code needs to be top notch and dead-on…so…another yes.

Now, how about being Expressive and Outgoing? You need this person churning code and figuring out what works best to make a site function. They’re probably on a team but most of the day, they’re in another world—in the programming zone. What if you hired someone highly motivated by being Expressive? It may fit the overall company but in this job, surrounded by quiet, worker-bee programmers, they’d probably be miserable…and potentially unproductive.

That’s what I mean when I say motivation is critical. It’s a complex measure, but you have to get it right. Motivation is just as important an employee attribute than any skill they may have on their resume. You can teach any skill you require, you can’t teach attitudes and motivations.

It is never too late to to explore new ways of thinking about hiring and discovering new approaches, techniques, and hiring tools. Be proactive in who you hire, after all, they could be the future of your company.

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