Is Your Applicant Motivated To Achieve Great Results?

When you are interviewing job applicants, 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. Start listening for how much "perceived control" a person believes he or she has in situations involving an obstacle or difficulty of some kind. Evidence typically flows out while the candidate is answering your interview questions. In the popular interviewing method called motivation-based interviewing, this is known as locus of control.

Why is perceived control so important? Because when people believe they can find a solution, they also believe their actions have the potential to positively affect the outcome. This is perceived control - over the obstacles and the outcome. Believing you can find a solution is a prerequisite to searching for one. Said in reverse, believing you can achieve a goal starts with believing you can find ways to overcome the obstacles, and it’s this sense of perceived control that hurdles more obstacles.

Conversely, when people believe their actions have no bearing on an outcome, they don’t try very hard to find a way around the obstacles. It’s this kind of thinking that takes ‘the wind out of a person’s sail’ leaving them stranded and unable to reach the goal. They convince themselves there is nothing they can do to steer the outcome. In their own mind they are powerless. They relinquish control over the outcome and take no responsibility for it. Their lack of drive often is mislabeled as being "unmotivated", when in truth, it’s the lack of an effective attitude for overcoming challenge that's causing their lack of drive.

Unknowingly, the wrong kind of attitude sabotages the success of many. People falsely conclude that successful people encounter fewer obstacles or simply have better luck. They proclaim, “It’s not me who determines the outcome…it’s those external factors beyond my control that do.” They blame everyone and everything else for their lackluster results except themselves or their own attitude. Skilled or unskilled, these people are not your ideal hire.

Spotting someone who lacks perceived control will enable you, the interviewer, to distinguish between self-motivated people and those who need motivating to get them to get the job done. It will enable you to see the "real" high performers from those pretending to be one. So how do you spot someone who lacks perceived control? It’s easier to do than you think. Using motivation-based interviewing (or “MBI” for short) is the best way. Going through MBI training teaches you all the "how-to's" in detail...but here's an overview. When asking your skill assessment questions, include a real life, job-related obstacle in each question. Next, find out specifically what each job candidate did and did not do in the face of challenge. Don’t assume that everyone automatically reacts effectively when the going gets tough because they don't. Here's the beauty of this interviewing method; applicants cannot talk in specific detail about the actions they did not take. They can only talk in generalities. Also don't underestimate the importance of the interview questions you ask. I recommend that you learn how do to this right so you can get the best hiring results and avoid needless/costly mistakes. You not only want to learn how to write effective interview questions, you want to make sure you are assessing the applicant's responses correctly as well. Realize, an example of a past success that did not 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 didn’t bother trying.
• There was nothing I could do about it. My hands were tied.
• It wasn't my job. 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.
• The work environment isn’t very motivating.

A person who perceives their power to produce results, also called "internally motivated", will use a whole different set of phrases, and even more important, different actions:

• We had to think of a creative solution. This is what we came up with.
• I’m sure it’s possible…I just have to figure out a way!
• I wasn’t going to give up. We had setbacks. Here's the progress we've made so far.
• I’m still working on it! Let me share the details.
• I knew we could make it work.

Starting to see the difference? Don't make the mistake of thinking all highly skilled applicants have an effective attitude while the under-skilled have the ineffective kind. Not the case at all. I can't tell you how many times I have personally hired the applicant light on skill but heavy on "I can" attitude...and I've never been disappointed!!! We need to move away from skill being the be-all-end-all criteria for predicting the best hires – because it's not.  

Carol Quinn’s Interviewer Tip: When it comes to hiring high achievers, you’re looking for a predominant pattern of putting in the effort to tackle the problems. "Predominant" is critical because one answer is NOT a reliable predictor of future performance, but rather, it's only a clue. Everyone responds both ways, effectively and ineffectively, however, each person responds one of these two ways more often. Whichever one that is, is a powerful predictor of that person's future job performance and success. Once you become aware of these clues, they’re easy to spot. You’ll notice when you hear blaming, excuses and hopelessness, you’ll also notice something missing – the constructive action and effort needed to hurdle the difficult challenge. Those two always go together. Make sure you look for a pattern instead of making a judgment based on one statement. Even the highest achiever makes excuses once in a while and poor job performers do hurdle some obstacles. If you want to hire applicants who are motivated to achieve great results, pick the ones that more often have an effective attitude for overcoming obstacles.

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