Recruiting processes are designed to cross references a candidates skills, qualifications and experiences against the job criteria.
The employer, therefore, uses the job interview questions to predict the applicant’s potential job performance.
More than ever before interviewers are focusing the interview questions on the interviewees temperament, with a goal of creating a positive company culture.
Strength-Based interviews, which are becoming more commonly used, are designed with the culture fit in mind. But even in competency-based job interviews, employers have always, and still do, embed personality questions into the interview process.
One of the most common interview questions used to find the ‘right fit’ employee is the ‘what motivates you?’ interview question.
For the applicant, having an open-ended question to answer, allows them to create a reply that meets many of the criteria on the interview scorecard.
The employers perspective
Employers ask the ‘motivation’ question to help understand what encourages an employee to work harder.
Career psychologists know that by hiring a team that will naturally work well with the environment and culture of the organisation, the team will be more productive, have a lower number of sick days and staff members are less likely to look for new opportunities at competitive companies.
The cost of recruitment is high and eats into the company profits. Recruiters are always looking for the right job interview question that will help them to hire, not only the most skilled and experienced employee, but one that will fit well within the current team.
Honest interviewee
There are two approaches to the ‘motivation’ question.
Honesty, is the first approach. The advice is always to be honest within a job interview.
The problem with true honestly is that many career professionals suffer from imposter syndrome.
A lack of self-belief results in an increase in the self-disclosure of weaknesses, weak worded job interview answers and excessive use of filler words creating an ‘amateurism’ interview identity.
What is needed, throughout the job interview, is a ‘self-assured’ interview identity to help the employer view the candidate as employable.
Being honest, even when the candidate is suitable – the candidate would fit in well with the company culture, can say the wrong thing, resulting in a low scoring answer.
Interview questions like ‘are you a self-starter or a team player?’ or ‘do you like starting or finishing tasks?’ can force an interviewee to choose an option that they don’t really have a preference for – they enjoy working both within a team or on their own initiative.
Not being honest doesn’t mean lying
A career professional can have a natural preference to follow processes and procedures – a detailed employee. But if this same employee ends up landing a job in a creative company where they hire innovative, out the box thinking, do it your own way people, the same details career professional can excel.
In fact, depending on the applicant’s past employers (and their company culture) creates an experience – a frame of reference, that shapes the answer they give. In this way not all honest answers, are honest.
Creating high scoring answers
Researching the company culture prior to the job interview is key to creating high scoring interview answers.
Obvious, I know, but I don’t mean researching the company history blah, blah, blah. What is required is an understanding of the company culture.
The organisations vision directly influences the company values, the company values affect the company manager’s decision-making process creating the workplace environment – the company culture.
Disney’s vision is ‘to make people happy.’ Imagine, in the job interview, being asked what is your purpose? or what motivates you? And the interviewee talks about quality, making great cartoon films, or designing fast-paced roller coasters. All good answers, all relevant to Disney’s brand, but the employer hearing this answer, thinks something is missing, something isn’t quite right.
Employers want to hire employees who are motivated by the same reason as the organisation is – their vision.
In this example, the ‘quality’ driven applicant can reframe their interview answer to be inline with the company vision ‘ to create quality animated films that make people feel good…’
To back up the ‘motivation’ answer, add an example to the initial opening line ‘…in my last company, I always focused of the outcome of films – making the audience to be happy. When working on X project……”
Conclusion
To be successful in a job interview, applicants need to research the culture of the company as the day to day environment of an organisation affects all decisions, including hiring decisions.
Answering questions by referencing how the applicant meets the culture and values of the company will improve the level of scores allocated to each job interview answer, increasing the number of job offers an applicant will receive.
Job Interview Advice
