Candidate motivation

A little while back (actually, quite a while back) I recorded an episode of the podcast Talent Savvy together with Bas van de Haterd and the discussions we had sparked me into writing this blog post. The topic for the show was “Candidate motivation”. (you can find the episode here)

“Why do you want to join our company?” is, or at least used to be (I really hope it’s” used to be”), a very common question to ask during a job interview. But is it relevant? How many companies have that kind of attraction power?
Not many.

Once upon a time, long before I started in recruitment, I went for an interview at a company called Sierra Windows. A window manufacturer. Exciting huh?
As I sat in the interview I was asked the question above. “So, why do you want to join Sierra Windows”.
My answer was something along the lines of: “To be honest, I don’t really know a lot about Sierra Windows but I thought that the job described in the ad sounded fun”.
Did I get the job? Yes I did.

There are many reasons why someone might be looking for a new job. They could be bored in their current position, perhaps just finished their studies, looking for a career change or been affected by layoffs (as we have seen a lot of lately). One reason isn’t better than the other. They are simply reasons.
I would argue that it’s our job as recruiters to motivate the candidate. It’s our job to write a great job ad enticing someone to apply. And if we find ourselves in a situation where an ad isn’t enough, it’s our job to go find the people we would like to apply and reach out to them. It’s our job to write a great reach out message they want to reply to. (Despite popular belief, they do not owe us a reply). And once we have people interested and they are part of the process, it’s our job as recruiters to KEEP them motivated. We do this by having a great process in place, that isn’t only about us evaluating them, but also giving them an opportunity to evaluate us.
As I mentioned above. It’s my job as a recruiter to motivate the candidate. Applicant or sourced doesn’t matter. Someone can be extremely motivated and apply on their own accord, only to be treated badly and their motivation is out the window. Or someone can apply simply on wim, find out more and become extremely motivated to join.

The process at Toca Boca

At Toca Boca we do not ask for cover letters. Instead we have a question we always ask as part of the application for all roles; “What excites you about the prospect of working at Toca Boca?”
I’m not looking for a huge motivational speech as an answer to this question. I’m fine with a short simple answer of “It was a fun ad!”. When I speak to them on the phone I get to find out more.

Various degrees of motivation

I’ve done a lot of phone screens in my 2 and a half years at Toca Boca. Some of them have been great, some of them not so much. I wanna tell you about 3 of them.

Number 1

On paper this person was definitely a match as to what we were looking for. Totally worth a screening call. During the call it became blatantly obvious that this person had no clue what Toca Boca does. The words “Are you a consultancy firm?” were uttered.
Again, I’m not looking for “I love Toca Boca” level of motivation, but if you apply for a job I expect you to know what we do.

To be fair, this person did admit to only applying because they had a quota to fill. In Sweden, if you are unemployed and want benefits, you have to apply to a certain number of jobs per week. We both agreed it wasn’t a match. Their motivation for applying was simply to keep their benefits.

Number 2

This second example was a person applying for one of our artist positions, meaning they also included a portfolio as part of their application. It takes quite a lot to pass our portfolio review so I was excited to speak to them.

As it turns out they hadn’t known about Toca Boca before seeing the ad, which is quite unusual for our artist positions to be honest. A lot of the people applying have been following us for years, but not this one. However, our ad had got them excited. And looking into our art style they could see it was inline with theirs (we saw that too, hence passing the portfolio screen).
We ended up hiring them. So despite not having a great desire to join Toca from the beginning. Our ad, or work and our process sealed the deal.

Number 3

This third example was a person who knew our head of tech, and was taking a call with me just as a favour to them. So it was a referred candidate, with the motivation equivalent to that of a sourced candidate.

We had the call and I explained a bit more about Toca, our values, motivations and culture. This information got them excited about us and actually wanting to join. For various reasons employment wasn’t an option, but they did end up working for us as a consultant.

Point being?

So what’s my point with these examples? Well, the motivation for someone applying for a job, or accepting a call when sourced/referred are many. These were just 3 examples. We cannot expect people to love us, or be truly excited from the get go. We, as recruiters, have to motivate them. And sometimes we have to demotivate them. They might have a different view of the company, that isn’t true. So, when finding our more about us they decide they don’t wanna join. And that’s ok too.

Summary

There are many reasons why someone might be looking for a new job. They could be bored in their current position, perhaps just finished their studies, looking for a career change or been affected by layoffs (as we have seen a lot of lately). One reason isn’t better than the other. They are simply reasons.
As I mentioned above. It’s my job as a recruiter to motivate the candidate. Applicant or sourced doesn’t matter. Someone can be extremely motivated and apply on their own accord, only to be treated badly and their motivation is out the window. Or someone can apply simply on wim, find out more and become extremely motivated to join.
Making hiring decisions based on a candidate’s “motivation” to join is just plain silly.