Interviewer Tip #3

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Listen for Clues that Can Help You Determine Whether a Job Candidate is Motivated to Produce Results

When you’re interviewing job candidates, you hear plenty of stories about heroic efforts to achieve goals and produce results. How do you read between the lines to determine whether you’re listening to a true-life account or a tall tale?

An applicant’s choice of words will give you clues. Listen for evidence of the candidate’s perceived control in situations that involved obstacles. This evidence will come out while the candidate is answering your interview questions.

Why is perceived control important? Because when people believe they can find solutions, they also believe their actions can affect the outcome. Believing you can find a solution is a prerequisite to searching for one - all required to hurdling tough obstacles.

Conversely, when people believe their actions have no bearing on the outcome, they don’t bother to try to find ways around obstacles. This kind of thinking takes ‘the wind out of their sail’ leaving them stranded. Convincing themselves that there is nothing they can do, they relinquish responsibility and cover over the results.

Unaware that their own thinking is their biggest saboteur, they credit the high achiever’s success merely to external circumstances. These people work best when they are being motivated or pushed by an external source, such as the boss or some kind of positive or negative incentive - not your ideal hire.

How do you spot someone who lacks perceived control or is externally motivated? It’s easier to do than you think. Using motivation-based interviewing is the best way. When asking your skill assessment questions, include a real life job-related obstacle in each question. Find out specifically what each job candidate did. Don’t assume everyone reacts to difficulty effectively. Interviewers commonly underestimate the importance of their interview questions. An example of a past success that didn’t involve an obstacle is NOT an indicator of future success. Once the obstacle is added into your interview questions, listen for words and phrases that indicate excuses, finger-pointing and refusal to take responsibility, such as:

• I knew it was never going to happen, so I gave up.
• There was nothing I could do about it.
• I had no control over it.
• It failed before and it will fail again.
• It’s not my fault, they didn’t give me the tools I needed to get the job done.

An internally motivated person, or one who perceives their power to produce results, will use a whole different set of phrases, and even more important, the actions that follow:

• We had to think of creative solutions.
• I’m sure it’s possible…and it was!
• I wasn’t going to give up.
• I’m still working on it!
• I knew we could make it work.

Once you’re aware of these clues, they’re easy to spot. You’ll notice when you hear blaming, excuses and hopelessness, you’ll also notice the lack of action and effort needed to hurdle the difficult challenge. Those two go together. When it comes to hiring High Performers, you’re looking for a predominant pattern of making the effort to overcome the obstacle. Make sure you look for a pattern instead of making a judgment based on one statement. Even the highest achiever is capable of making excuses once in a while and average job performers hurdle some obstacles. The person you want to hire, however, more often takes ownership and responsibility for their action and inaction.

To learn more about hiring High Performers , learn motivation-based interviewing (MBI). MBI is an interviewing methodology filled with effective techniques and pointers to help interviewers identify the best. It’s more effective than behavior-based interviewing and better at assessing motivation. It can be used for hiring any position, requires no additional interviewing time and it’s easy to learn. Instructor-led courses in MBI is taught in multiple languages and available on-line in English. Employers can request a free one-day preview of a MBI web course at this link: MBI Web Course Preview.

Interviewing Tips & Techniques are provided by Hire Authority, Inc. Remember, if the time you spend interviewing doesn’t help you to accurately predict future performance, it’s a waste of time. This information and much more can be found in the book Don’t Hire Anyone Without Me!

Writing the most effective interview questions is a skill that will help you make better hires. To learn more about how to gather better candidate information, please visit our Learning Center at www.HireAuthority.com. Just click on “Learning Center” to get started.