How to build top performers in the societies of the XXI century
What do top performers like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Chiara Ferragni have in common? What makes their level of motivation sustainable in the long-term?
The aim of this article is to reflect on how to screen and recruit those candidates that are driven by a real passion, instead of those ones who seeks social recognition, status, economic stability, or are likely to be more influenced by other society pressure’s factors.
Investigating how to recognise and select applicants among hundreds, and understand who is genuinely motivated, is fundamental for building a company with people that are going to stay and grow in that company. Here the recruiter work plays a strategic role.
What can help recruiters and HR professionals during the screening processes, is to select applicants not only based on their intellectual capacity, time/stress management and soft skills. The recruiter job should investigate how to predict work behaviours of the candidates, instead of focusing on how each candidate performs single or multiple tasks related to an interview.
The common assumption within the recruitment process is that if candidates are good in passing “tests”, they will be likely to be good in passing interviews. If that is the case, they will be likely to be good in performing in their job, and so on.
Unfortunately, and 40 years of research testifies it, there is no direct correlation between test performance and future jobs behaviour. So, how to get the golden candidate driven by a strong passion and with good soft/hard skills, in a society oppressed by economic, status and social pressures?
I believe the answer is improving the way of selecting people, by creating screening and selection processes based on intrinsic motivation’s tests: motivation directs behaviours in the long- term, not test scores.
Intrinsic motivation is the desire to engage in an activity due to the fact that the activity itself is enjoyable. This is the beauty with it, because that activity continues without the need for external factors to influence it.
Therefore, intrinsic motivation development is what builds top performers, what helps them maintaining their dedication for decades, and achieve that level of masters in life.
So, which traits are common to those individuals driven by inner motivation and passion? Over 40 years of research shows that those individuals are more resilient, perform better, show greater joy in life, and satisfaction at work. These are the candidates each company should seek for, and these are the candidates we as individuals should become and keep being.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Let’s have faith in our strengths, passions, in what makes us different, and what makes us contribute to our society today and tomorrow.