Motivational fit is one of the three essential ingredients hiring managers measure during an interview. Most hiring managers want to hire highly engaged and motivated individuals and they do this by gathering push and pull factors. 

In this blog, we’ll share what push and pull factors are and how important they are to understanding your true motivation. 

Why? Because these people are likely to possess other characteristics like, enthusiasm, be self-driven, ambition, and all these lead to a person being more productive because they take pride in their work.  Highly productive staff usually have a positive impact on the profitability of an organization.  

It’s important to get the balance when describing your reasons for leaving a job.  There is going to be a mixture of positives and negative reasons.  That’s why it’s important to practice your answer to the question, why are you considering leaving?  It’s important you communicate positively and don’t dwell on the negative reasons.

The risk of not preparing and practicing is talking too much or even starting to waffle, justify, or blame situations and people.  It’s not attractive to see or hear this during an interview.  

Researching and preparing adequately takes time, however, it’s worth spending some quality time understanding the tough questions asked during an interview. 

• Limited opportunities
• No promotion or progress
• No career advancement
• Relationship breakdown with your manager or colleagues
• Toxic culture or environment
• Treated poorly
• Poor salary or under market rate
• Lack of work/life balance
• Under valued 

• What reasons have made you consider leaving your current job?
• Why did you leave your last job?
• Describe the current company culture and what aspects you like and don’t like so much?
• Why did you quit your job before securing another job?
• What made you start looking for a new job?
• Describe your manager’s style and the aspects that worked and didn’t work for you?
• How would you describe your colleagues and how have you worked well (or not so well) as a team?

Hiring managers want to understand the reasons you are attracted to their job and your reasons for being interested in joining the company.  That’s why doing your research is so important. 

It’s common to ask a candidate why they are attracted to the job?  This first tests whether the candidate has read the job description thoroughly and that they understand the nature of the role.  It also assesses the motivational fit.

Avoid the generic answers such as;

“I’m looking for a new challenge”.  What does this new challenge look like?  What makes a job challenging?  Are there particular aspects of the new job that are more appealing and what are the reasons? 

• What attracts you to the job you are applying for?
• Having researched our company, what makes you particularly interested in joining us?
• How would you describe your ideal manager?
• How would you describe your ideal working environment? 
• What made you select this discipline, sector, or industry?  Explain your rationale? 
• What are your short-medium-long-term career plans and goals? 

Too many push factors (reasons for leaving your current job) and you’ll probably receive a rejection.  Because you’ve not explained why you are attracted to their job and instead focused on why you want to leave.

However, you do need to explain your reasons for leaving an organization because people don’t tend to leave jobs when they are happy.  Unless you’ve been headhunted and you may not have been considering leaving your current job.  We call these candidates “passive candidates”. 

It’s about getting the balance between the push factors (reasons for leaving) and the pull factors (reasons for joining the new organization).

• Lack of career progression = Looking for an opportunity to use and enhance your experience, knowledge, and skills

• Toxic working environment = Describe your ideal culture and working environment, and match this to the company

• Relationship with your manager broke down = Looking for a new job that values my input and utilizes my experience, skills, and knowledge

• Hated this about the job = Describe the aspects you want more of in your job and less (politics, bureaucracy, red tape…etc.).

There are certain, maybe, obvious questions interviewers ask. However, it might just be a conversation discussing aspects of your job, and working environment. 

Some of the questions might be a lot more subtle, however, they equally gathering lots of evidence of your motivation, and therefore, the push and pull factors.