In this presentation, the speaker defines motivation as the driver behind why candidates apply for a job and argues that the way a role is advertised fundamentally shapes applicant quality. Using a split‑test of two CEO job ads—one emphasizing perks and prestige, the other highlighting a tough mission with low pay—the speaker shows that the perk‑focused ad attracted 113 applications but yielded fewer than two viable candidates, while the mission‑focused ad attracted only 11 applications yet produced ten strong candidates. The speaker attributes this to productive people seeking challenging, purpose‑driven work rather than comfort. He explains that Performia can quantify a candidate’s potential value and destructive versus constructive impact, allowing firms to predict ROI on hires. The talk concludes with actionable advice: craft job ads that stress difficult challenges, be transparent about the role’s hardships during interviews, and use performance‑based screening to attract and select high‑impact candidates.
Chapters
You know, it's really amazing. There's this thing called motivation, and you know, I think sometimes it gets a little bit too confused, but it's really actually simple. You know, motivation is just what makes someone, what causes someone to get out of bed in the morning, what causes someone to want to apply for your job and work in your organization. And from a hiring perspective, that's all we're really interested in. Why does a person want to apply for our job? And this is where how you attract candidates becomes so important. And we've actually done split testing on this and played with it. So you have these 2 job ads. Okay, the first one says, come and work at my company. We're the top payers. We have lots of training. We have beautiful offices. We have the best brand name in the world. And you know, basically everyone is going to think you're a god because you work at our company. And of course, and this is to be the CEO. And so this ad could attract 100 to 300 applications. In actual fact, if I go back to the actual split test we did, it attracted 113 applications. Okay, then we got this different ad for a CEO. It goes into the mission. Your mission is to 5 times the profit and 3 times the sales of the company over 5 years. It's gonna be really tough. You know, the company's actually in a bit of a mess right now. And we can't afford to pay you much. It'll be low pay. And— but great rewards. And this ad might only bring in one applicant, but I know from doing it, from the example that we did, it brought in 11. So why is the difference? Is it because these people are masochists and they like pain? No. But it's pretty simple. It's like someone that wants to be a CEO but is not sure if they can do the job isn't going to apply for this job, are they? No. This is your Ethan Hawke recruitment. Mission: Impossible 2. Here's your mission, Ethan, if you'd like to take it. This one here is basically, come to our resort and relax. And we'll give you the title of CEO and you'll be a god to everyone that works for you and have a big office. It doesn't matter where in the organization this sits. There's a technology for advertising every position in any— in every organization. And here we have the 2 extremes at the top of the organization. But now interesting enough, because Performia can accurately measure return on investment or the potential for someone's how much value they can add and also can measure how destructive or constructive they might be, that we know out of these 113, less than 2 of them were even interesting. Out of these 11, 10 were interesting. So just by changing the strategy of how jobs are advertised and what motivates people can already improve not only how long it takes to do the hiring, because obviously there's a lot less time to handle 10 or 11 applicants than 113, But already we've got a very low margin of error. Even if we use no more screening but just hire one person because we picked them out of a hat, we're gonna do better than all we can with every sort of system here. And there's a very interesting reason that this happens, and that comes down to that what makes productive people happy is actually, you know, being productive. Is finding some goal or some purpose or tough challenge and overcoming it. That's what makes them happy. And funny enough, these guys are never looking for happiness because they're looking for the next challenge, which just creates happiness. These guys are always looking for happiness because they think happiness is having no challenges and so never become happy. So push people, challenge them. Alright, give it a go in your own organization. Change a few of your ads or the way you're trying to hire people. In the hiring interview, tell them how terrible the job's going to be and how tough and horrible it will be. What about the people who are not happy? And see who you're left with. Give it a go. If you need help, we're right there. We can help you. The whole strategy on how to attract and the whole strategy on how to screen because it's so that you know, you know, which people you should be interested in. Thank you.
