Pitfalls job seekers, employers should avoid in interviews

Imagine waking up on a Thursday morning. You hear your phone alarm blaring in the background grabbing your attention and pulling you ever so dramatically out of your peaceful slumber and into the reality of the waking world in a new day.

As you shut off your alarm, you notice that you received an email earlier that morning from a company that months before you applied online for a new job position. You anxiously tap to open the email and peep into your phone screen still groggy hoping for good news rather than a regret message signalling rejection for the post.

Success! The firm valued your application and assigned you an interview time for the following week. Euphoria ensues. The whole remainder of your day you walk with an extra spring in your step and joy in your heart because you are now closer to possibly attaining your dream job.

Such scenarios repeat themselves thousands of times per week across Kenya as supply and demand ebbs and flows in our labour market. The hard to secure interview stands as a cherished right of passage in our career progression.

Many job seekers rehearse what to say and how to say it during a job interview. But many neglect to decide what themes are permissible versus inexcusable during job interrogations. Just published research by Rellie Derfler-Rozin and Marko Pitesa found that many job seekers make a crucial fundamental mistake in interviews.

Typically, towards the end of a position interview, the panel opens up the floor for the employment seeker to ask any questions that he or she desires to know about the firm or the position itself. One of the worst actions a job candidate can do that dooms their chances of success: ask about extrinsic rewards in the job interview.

Extrinsic reward questions trigger, to the untrained interviewer, that the job candidate is driven by extrinsic motivation such as money, fame, plaudits, popularity, comfort, or prestige. Therefore, do not ask about salary, health insurance, pension schemes, working hours, promotion timeframes, flexible reporting arrangements, or anything similar.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, means someone is driven by internal rewards including mastery of a discipline, autonomy, purpose, or interconnectedness, among others. Organisations and interviewers aspire to see job seekers who hold intrinsic pure reasons for desiring the job such as loving the very idea of working for the firm or passionately caring about the particular industry. Such strong employer preference led the researchers to term it the motivation purity bias.

Because of the motivation purity bias, a job candidate should focus their questions highlighting their own intrinsic motivations for the position. Ask about the organisation’s long-term strategy within the industry. Inquire about the greatest strengths of the firm. Probe the company’s competitive advantage.

Avoid at all costs any query about benefits, perks, or conditions of the job position. If you really feel compelled to ask about such extrinsic rewards, be sure phrase your question in a way that cheerfully highlights your intrinsic motivation in the same statement, such as: “please help me know perhaps the salary range and the benefits for the role so I can do some budgeting because this company and job are perfect for me”.

Are companies correct to harshly judge job seekers who inquire about the extrinsic aspects of a job before such details are offered? Sadly, no.

As with many practices in organisations, a disconnect exists between what science knows and what entities actually do. Expressing curiosity or raising an inquiry about salary, benefits, and job conditions does not psychologically indicate the absence of simultaneous intrinsic motivation.

Allowing the motivation purity bias to persist unchecked and untrained on interview panels harms organisational performance by weeding out potentially outstanding candidates based on an arbitrary and useless metric.

Dr Scott may be reached on [email protected] or on Twitter: @ScottProfessor