HR should focus on candidate motivations during recruiting process

Recruiting is a vital process for companies and their human resources teams. The multi-step process requires HR to find valuable potential employees who truly understand the organization's business model and can contribute to its success. When searching for possible candidates, hiring teams should look at a number of elements. While many companies focus on the tangible aspects of a possible hire, they may be missing out on other crucial areas that could make a prospective employee beneficial to their business. Let's take a closer look at motivations versus qualifications in the recruiting process:

What are executives looking for?
Candidates often hear their KSAs – knowledge, skills and abilities – are the most important factors businesses look at. A new survey from FutureStep, a talent solutions company, might prove that once well-known fact wrong.

According to the survey, one-third of the executives polled believe a potential hire's motivation and drivers to be the most essential element during the hiring process. Skill set came in at 27 percent, while past experience only earned 24 percent of executives' votes. These results may be quite different from what employers might expect.

Each company has their own way of hiring, but failing to pay attention to personal characteristics and motivations could lead a business to extend an offer to a candidate who won't be the right fit in the end, according to Gary Swart, venture partner at Polaris Partners and former CEO of oDesk. The individual attributes HR should look for include: integrity, passion, energy and initiative, among others.

As for motivation, HR should search for candidates that are not only excited about the mission of the company, but are also eager and willing to face any challenges thrown their way. Hiring people based on strong personal characteristics and motivations will ensure that employees find both job satisfaction and individual growth throughout their careers. The study also noted prompt feedback is crucial to candidate care and the recruiter's professional network is the first place he or she will look for potential employees.

Emotional intelligence and being book smart aren't mutual. While someone may have all the KSAs a company is looking for, personal drivers and motivations could be missing. The key to recruiting effectively is to find candidates that have both qualities to avoid a poor hiring decision, which could cost the business time and money, Fast Company reported.