Talented, skilled, dedicated and motivated employees generate an incalculable return on investment for your business. Motivating current employees is hard enough, but it is far easier when your HR department recruits candidates who already show passion and pride in their current work.

Key Traits of Motivated Candidates

Search for recruits who will become engaged with your company by looking for the following characteristics:

• The correct candidate has a record of initiative and seeing assignments through to the desired result.
• Their resume displays a tendency to lead, whether through projects, teams, products or industry initiatives. These leadership positions may be technical or managerial.
• The best candidates intrinsically view problems as invitations to work harder rather than impediments to progress.
• Even the best employees make mistakes or encounter insurmountable obstacles. In the face of these, motivated employees maintain an irrepressible enthusiasm. Furthermore, they draw useful, positive lessons from such situations.

Are They Looking for Change for the Right Reasons?

Employees can become discouraged with little or no effort on the part of management. Ignoring their efforts, leaving them out of decision-making, using fear to motivate or failing to challenge their creativity are well-known ways to sap employee vigor.

Employees engaged in the company’s business are constantly looking to do more, to take on new projects, learn new skills or find ways to do their current tasks more efficiently. They become dissatisfied when these desires are thwarted or they are not allowed flexibility in how and when results are delivered.

Keep in mind such circumstances when discussing their reasons for considering a change of employers. These provide clues to whether the person feels they cannot spread their wings or that they are simply bored or looking for a larger paycheck.

Start Off on the Right Footing

Once you have identified your motivated recruit and have discussed pay, benefits and working conditions, be sure to uphold your end of the deal. If the employee does not feel that he or she is receiving what was promised, performance may be negatively impacted from day one.