Cambridge Business Association
Motivation-Based Interviewing
Book

Motivation-Based Interviewing

Carol Quinn
SHRM, 2018
Buy book or audiobook

Read or listen offline

Amazon Kindle
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • For Beginners
  • Insider's Take

Recommendation

Hiring consultant Carol Quinn synthesizes more than 30 years of recruiting experience into a simple, rational methodology she calls Motivation-Based Interviewing (MBI). MBI assesses candidates based on their skills, attitude and career fit, which together, drive self-motivation. Counter to conventional wisdom, Quinn places responsibility for engagement on the employee, which, in turn, puts the onus on organizations to hire self-motivated high performers who fit their roles. Quinn’s guide offers helpful insights into motivation and candidate selection, and belongs on every interviewer’s bookshelf.

Summary

To hire high performers consistently, organizations need better tools.

An organization’s success depends on hiring high performers. But at many organizations, hiring personnel lack training in interviewing and use faulty behavior-based techniques. They also tend to equate candidates’ skill level with performance and assume past behavior predicts future behavior. All of this hampers the quality of hiring. But learning the qualities that high performers have in common can help you identify and hire them more consistently.

The primary quality that predicts performance? Motivation. High performers possess – or can gain – the skills and experience they need to do their jobs, but they set themselves apart because they love their work and draw on self-motivation to do it well. When you focus primarily on candidates’ skills, you might learn which skills they possess and their proficiency levels, but you’ll learn nothing about whether potential hires will exert the initiative to use them well.

Accordingly, interviewers can greatly improve their odds of hiring high performers by using Motivation-Based Interviewing (MBI). When you use MBI...

About the Author

Carol Quinn is the founder and CEO of the hiring consultancy Hire Authority.

Comment on this summary