As a recruiter back in the day, and now as a business owner – the hiring process has always fascinated me. We meet someone, we decide they might be good, we offer them a job! Simples. Except it shouldn’t be. And gone are the days of all the power being in the employers’ hands. In today’s hiring market, people are often struggling to get interviews, and to even get a reply to an application. And once they have got past that stage and actually meet a human (which seems to be less and less these days – an AI bot will review your CV first, so good luck if you haven’t got those 5 key works in your CV that it’s looking for from the job spec) it is still very much in the candidates hands as to whether they will accept the role. The more barriers placed in front of someone actually getting a job, the better that company better be when it comes to interview, shortlisting and onboarding. Despite what many big companies seem to think.
And for me, we seem to be missing a huge part of “selling” in an interview process to the candidate. And by the “sell” I actually mean – do you know what motivates this person – and can you give it to them in the role you are offering? Because if you can, that’s a very compelling reason for that candidate to accept.
Herzberg published his key piece of research back in 1959 called “The Motivation to Work” and we have struggled to replace that with anything else meaningful in the intervening years. His research focussed on what motivates people at work – we focus so much on salary, benefits and the package but we are missing the TRUE motivators. Herzberg sites these as personal growth, advancement, achievement and responsibility. These create true job satisfaction and motivation. But when we look at the questions asked in interviews, it is rare to find these listed as themes within questions.
The recruitment industry for example is renowned for its lunch clubs, trips to Vegas and the flashy watch after x number of years’ service – but as we have an aging working population (ONS Labour Force Survey data typically shows that workers aged 40–64 make up slightly over half of all employed people) I predict that these are not the motivating rewards they once were. And if our ageing population are no longer interested in trips to Vegas, or that expensive watch (because maybe they’ve already got that and bought the matching T-Shirt when it was actually cool ) finding out what they really want will be key in the next 10-15 years. So, if we want to retain great people - providing incentives, rewards and the right development pathways that align with individuals’ real motivators are going to be key for the workforce of the future.
And whilst we think about rewards – let’s think about what behaviours we are rewarding. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are two more areas we can delve into as part of a more rigorous and effective interview process. Intrinsic motivators are just what a person finds naturally interesting and enjoyable. They don’t need the promise of the reward – they will just do the thing for the pure love and enjoyment of it. Extrinsic motivators are very different – it’s knowing you will get something at the end of a task or challenge. There is not necessarily the desire to do the “thing,” just the desire to get the end result and prize at the end. And in many roles this poses the employer another important question we should ponder. How do you get the results your business needs without providing a suite of rewards, on a platform that costs £1000’s every month?
Hiring people whose motivators align with the way a business functions, plus finding those intrinsic motivators that align with their actual day to day role - now that really would be good business.
