By Stacy Pursell of The VET Recruiter

When it comes to experiencing hiring success, identifying the top job candidates in the employment marketplace is the easy part. It might be difficult to believe that, especially since qualified candidates are so scarce at the moment.

Once you’ve found the right candidates, considering their skills and experience is, of course, important. After all, you want to hire someone who has the right amount of skills and experience to carry out the duties of the position. However, the candidates’ skills and experience are not all that you must uncover about them if you wish to hire them.

You must find out something else, as well:

If you find a candidate who has the proper level of skill and the right amount of experience, but you don’t know what they desire or what motivates them, then it will be more challenging for you to successfully hire them.

The problem arises when a hiring manager assumes that candidates automatically desire to work for their organization and are motivated to do so. However, that is not necessarily the case.

That’s why the question, “Why are you leaving your current employer?” is such a poor interview question. Because if you’re dealing with a top passive candidate, they may not have made the decision to leave their employer. They might just be looking to see what opportunities are available in the job market. They could, after exploring those opportunities, simply stay at their current employer.

With this in mind, below are three best practices for employers during the hiring process:

#1—Uncover the desire of your job candidates.
This involves asking the right questions during the interview. Probe deeper than just surface-level questions.

Identify candidates’ “pain points,” which are the specific reasons why they are exploring other opportunities. You must discover what truly motivates them in both the job search that they’re conducting and also in their career. They’re not interviewing with your organization “just for fun.”

#2—Make connections.
This means connections between what the candidates truly want (i.e., what motivates them) and what your organization can offer in a job opportunity. Once again, refer to their pain points.

Why are they exploring other opportunities? Make a connection between those reasons and how you can alleviate their pain points. Candidates have to be able to visualize working for your organization before they will actually work for your organization.

#3—Align your opportunity with their career goals.
Now that you’ve made connections between what they want in a job and your opportunity, do the same thing with the candidate’s desire for their career and your opportunity.

Candidates don’t choose a job only because of the job itself. They also choose it for a host of other reasons, including the employer, the company culture, and how they can use the job to help develop and grow their career overall. You want the candidate to view your opportunity as not just a new job, but the next logical step in the growth of their Animal Health career.

Trying to hire based on skills and experience alone is a tricky proposition. It should only serve as a starting point and not the totality of your hiring strategy. Once you identify viable candidates, you must also identify the desire and motivation that are driving those candidates and then make the connections between what these candidates want and what your organization offers.

This is why motivation is critical in terms of Animal Health recruiting and hiring. In a candidates’ market, it’s not all about what you want as an organization. It’s about what the job candidates want, so focus more on what’s motivating those candidates and how you can put their motivation to use for you as a new employee.

(Stacy Pursell is a Certified Personnel Consultant and a Certified Employment Retention Specialist. She is a workplace/workforce expert with 25 years of executive search and recruiting experience in the Animal Health industry and Veterinary profession. For more information about Stacy’s firm, The VET Recruiter, visit www.thevetrecruiter.com.)