Understand what motivates your candidates to make accurate and effective hiring decisions.
Motivation plays a huge part in how well your new hire will perform in their role. But how do you find out if what motivates them matches what the job and your organisational culture offer?
What is motivation?
You need to understand what motivation in the workplace is in order to identify it in your candidates. Rather than being a single trait, it is a combination of factors which we all use to some extent. flowprofiler® defines motivation in terms of seven dimensions:
- Collaboration
- Recognition
- Autonomy
- Growth
- Reward
- Well-being
- Purpose
So, from this we can see that motivation means very different things to different people. What motivates one, might actually demotivate another. Some, for example, will thrive on collaboration, while others prefer to hide away and be left alone to do their best work. There is nothing inherently wrong with either preference, but whether this matches the needs of the role or the team culture is key.
A commonly employed method of motivation is to set targets and reward on achievement. For strong sales orientated types, this can be highly effective. For others however, not achieving targets can become demoralising and result in disengagement. You may find the people who fall into this category are better motivated by recognition of their contribution, rather than being expected to hit a black and white target. Sometimes, a simple ‘well done’ holds more value than an M&S voucher.
Recruiting for motivation
Motivation plays a significant role in onboarding someone to the organisation, particularly in the current candidate-led market. With candidate ‘gazumping’ posing a real issue especially for SMEs at the moment, how do you ensure a successful onboarding experience?
Much of this comes down to your organisation’s values and how your candidate motivators align with them. You should show your chosen candidate from the point of offer and through the pre-start period that your workplace culture is one which matches their motivating dimensions. There really is no point in ‘talking it up’ or paying lip service to their need for opportunities for growth, autonomy and sense of purpose if that isn’t what you can offer to them. At best, your candidate will decline before starting, at worst you both waste time, energy and resources when they start … and promptly leave.
Motivation is a skill which can be developed, but there is still a baseline of where an individual is most comfortable. There is also the risk of hiring an individual who is hyper-motivated by reward or collaboration, only to find that they do this at the expense of their own sense of purpose and personal well-being. The inevitable result? Burnout.
This is where coaching and training to develop motivation skills which sit in the ‘flow zone’ is beneficial. It’s particularly effective during the early onboarding weeks and months when your new hire is finding their feet and learning what is expected of them. Putting emphasis on developing awareness of their motivating factors will enable them to settle and grow into their new role more efficiently.
Develop awareness of motivation in your leaders
Of course, it is not just the new hire who needs to understand the motivation. This is a critical piece of the jigsaw for the hiring manager too, both before and after a hiring decision is made.
The hiring manager should have strong social awareness and regard for others skills. They should be aware that their reports may not share their own motivators and be able to lead appropriately. Managers will come unstuck if they blindly ‘hire in their own image’,only to find that their ‘mini-me’ isn’t motivated in the same way.
flowprofiler®: Your tool kit for motivation
Now you understand more about the vagaries of motivation. A potential minefield, you might think. Yet when broken down and defined, recruiting for motivation and then developing it further, it’s actually quite straightforward . Using the right assessments is key to achieving success and a solid return on your investment in the recruitment process.
motivationflow®, from flowprofiler®, is an easy-to-use psychometric assessment, created specifically for the workplace. It takes a snapshot of your candidates’ motivation in two states: day today and when under pressure. This allows you to identify whether the candidate, the job and your organisation/team culture are likely to be a good fit. It gives you a heads up before you make a decision as to what coaching and training interventions might be necessary to optimise the onboarding process. It can even help your line managers to develop better leadership skills as they learn to adapt their management style to meet the needs of the teams.
Talk to us about how we can help you to create recruitment and development programmes with flowprofiler® which reduce the risk of poor hiring decisions and optimise your onboarding process.
