Hiring for Retention: Measuring Candidate Aspirations

Most organizations have systems in place to measure performance and explore career path opportunities for their employees. But far too few employers take stock of candidate aspirations during the interview and selection process.

In evaluating new talent, the company’s interest in candidates’ career desires can go a long way in both attracting and securing that talent. While it is important to evaluate the candidate first and foremost on their ability to do the current job now, it benefits both candidate and company to also look to the future.

There are three areas of exploration to measure candidate aspirations:

- What are the candidate’s career aspirations?

- What can the company support in terms of those aspirations?

- What are they willing to do to acquire the necessary skills for their desired future?

Candidate Career Aspirations

Career aspirations reveal the candidate’s long-term career goals, plans and dreams for their future. Many people aspire to become part of a management team. This is a big step up because it brings greater responsibility, power and of course more money. Others may aspire to start their own company.

Aspirations do not always have to be to move upwards or expand. Many people aspire to move to an entry level job in a different industry and plenty of people enjoy new challenges and learning new skills.

Understanding a candidate’s aspirations and ambitions requires you to get to know the person behind the resume. Will they be a high-performer or also offer high-potential - someone with great ambition, motivation and long-term professional goals?

You will need to assess the candidate’s motivation - their willingness to do something in the direction of their aspirations - as well as their drive - their planned efforts to realize their vision for their career. What makes their work meaningful in their eyes? Why is their work important to them? Deep inside, what is the burning fire that ignites their passion for their future?

Organizational Culture

Once you probe into the candidate’s vision for their career, you can better understand their expectations for their career at your company. Now you need to ask one of the most important questions to ask every candidate is: why do you want to join our company?

If a candidate is intrinsically motivated to join a particular company, they will demonstrate passion for its business, products, services and culture. They will have thoroughly researched your company and be able to articulate their views on the company and its future.

!measuring-candidate-aspirations-blog.png

You must assess if a candidate’s persona and values would fit in with the company’s culture.

- Do your leaders lead by consensus? How does that match up with the candidate’s style?

- Is the culture competitive and performance-driven? How would your candidate perform?

- Do you work in a highly politicized environment? How would your candidate navigate the waters?

- What is your company’s leadership model? Does that match your candidate’s leadership style?

- Will the candidate thrive in your culture? Why would they succeed and why would they fail?

It’s easy to focus on the short-term objective of filling a given role. But taking a longer-term, holistic view of the business — of its talent needs and of a candidate’s future potential — you can hire not only for today, but for retaining high-potential employees for the future as well.

Candidate Commitment to Self-Development

Any competency can be taught and developed, but motivation and passion are the sole responsibility of each individual candidate.

Exploring a candidate’s commitment to self-development can be a slippery slope, as many candidates are cautious about revealing weaknesses during the screening, interview and selection process. It’s fair game to explore the candidate’s ability to honestly self-assess how they will build on their strengths and address their weaknesses.

You will also want to examine the level of the candidate’s commitment to self-improvement and professional development as well as the process they follow to achieve their professional development objectives.

About HireQuotient

At HireQuotient, our AI-powered business skills assessments help you assess your candidate’s ability, willingness and manageability to fill your position and perform exceptionally.

Our chatbot-powered skill assessments are built around realistic work scenarios, ensuring candidates answer structured questions based on the provided data and generate insights into each candidate’s job-specific skills and business competencies.

In addition, our powerful, simple and easy-to-use dashboards allow you to create customized workflows for effortless operations, view detailed analytics for making data-driven decisions and seamlessly integrate into your existing candidate automation flow

Learn more about how HireQuotient can help your organization close the candidate skills gap. Just visit to schedule a demo today!

Also Read:

Creating Candidate Personas: Elevating Hiring Approach