Moving Motivators as a technique for Hiring

How could we execute a better hiring process? How can we recognize the values of the candidate without biases? How can we be sure about the effects the candidate’s motivations will have on the company? How can we know what makes him/her tick?

In one of my recent jobs, we detected the necessity to expand the team. I was in a small company so we didn’t have a human resources department. One day, suddenly, my colleagues suggested that I was the right person for this mission. So I accepted my commitment even when I didn´t have any experience in the hiring process. The only experience that I had about hiring was sitting on the other side of the table (like a candidate).

I didn´t have much time so I started to learn quickly through  two amazing books: Hiring Geeks That Fit and Work Rules!

My takeaways from these books were:

• Hiring is the most important thing that you can do for your company. The people you hire are the people that will grow your company culture.
• Hire not only for the person´s skills but also for the person´s values.
• Be careful with any biases about differences between your personality and the candidate´s personality.

There are more valuable techniques, tips and great info in these books. I would like to encourage you to read them.

So.. How could we execute a better hiring process? How can we recognize the values of the candidate without biases? How can we be sure about the effects the candidate’s motivations will have on the company? How can we know what makes him/her tick?

Well, fortunately I found a very good and fun technique/game to do this: Moving Motivators. Moving Motivators is an exercise create by Jurgen Appelo in his Management 3.0 workout, to reflect on motivation and how it is affected by organizational change. It is based on the ten intrinsic desires which Jurgen derived from the works of Daniel Pink, Steven Reiss, and Edward Deci.

It´s very easy to play. You just need to follow three steps:

1. Which motivators are important to you? Place the cards in order from Left (least important) to Right (most important.)

2. How can change affect your motivators? Move the card Up for a positive change and Down for a negative one.

3. The reflection of organizational change on your motivators. When most of  your important motivators go down or when the least important ones go up, you may have some work to do on your own motivation.

So I used it in my sessions with the candidates with the question: How would you value your move to this company?

Thus, I got two takeaways from this game: the first one was to know how the candidate thinks about his/her values in order to compare it with the company’s values; and second, was how his/her values would change if he/ she wants to move to our company.

Therefore, apart from other important aspects like technical skills, human skills and salaries, we were able to know if that person could live with us and live with our company values and team values. To me that was the most important thing to consider because we were thinking in the long-term.

I don’t know if I did a good job but at least the two people that we hired are still working there, and fitting in with the company culture.