Transcript - Episode 014 - CLAMS

Episode 014
C.L.A.M.S

You can listen HERE.

Employee motivation. It's the number two topic it seems. You see, right now it's the "thing" to talk about culture and culture fit. We are priming the pump with "culture, culture, culture." Then we hire people, and they might fit the culture, but they aren't motivated to do the job… what happened?

Hi, I'm Daava Mills, The Rebellious Recruiter. Candidate motivation is hot topic. But how can we identify motivating factors and use them to keep employees engaged? It's a surprisingly simple tool. And recently I had the opportunity to teach it to a CEO, that used it in another way that was very effective. Today we're going to talk about a tool I learned two decades ago, and how effective it still is. 

So, pull up a seat, and let's chat. 

Intro music…

As you might have heard on other podcasts, I started recruiting just over 20 years ago. When I started company, culture was not part of the consideration. Obviously, we looked for people who got along with the boss, and could work the hours the company wanted, but we simply worked off Mission Statements and Scopes of Work. No one talked about Company Culture and Company Values. 

My personal opinion is that while culture and values are important, we've lost the sticking reasons of valuable employees, because there is a fundamental mismatch in what a person emotionally needs to come to work daily. Now I'm not talking about their need to have a shoulder to cry on, or their need to be friends with all their coworkers. I'm talking about the "work needs to get done" dynamic. So, culture gets them in the seat, but what gets them to stay in the seat?

Here's the tool, it's an acronym, and easy to remember: CLAMS

C – Challenge
L – Location
A – Advancement
M – Money
S - Security

Now, I'm going to take you through this acronym in the way that I was taught to use it. Then, I will take you through it the way I watched my CEO use it recently. Both methods are highly effective but bring up different viewpoints during the interview. 

I was taught there are 5 types of drivers for people when seeking a job. Candidates have the main one and should be matched according to what the company needs the position to accomplish. This part of my recruiting has become so natural to me, that I don't have specific questions around it when I talk to people. Instead, I watch and listen for what lights them up. Then I start digging. If there doesn't seem to be a match with my needs, I don't assume. I start talking about the business needs and listen to their answers. There is no perfect match out there. If you are a student of Gary Chapman's "The Five Love Languages" you'll know that people often have a primary and secondary love language. The same is true with CLAMS, it's quite often there is a primary, and a secondary… If their secondary matches what you would need the primary to be, and everything else lines up, you have a great candidate, and will likely have a solid employee. 

Okay, into CLAMS now, starting with C, for Challenge.

Let's say you have a brand new HRIS (Human Resources Information System), you have a team that has not used a modern one. And let's say you want to have a person who is up for the intricacies of programming and managing it. You want to advertise about the challenge your company is facing, and how you want people who have proven they can take on challenges effectively and successfully. You aren't looking for someone who has administered one. Why??? 

Let's break it down. 

A person who is motivated by challenge, and has competent system skills, they are going to resonate with the issue you are facing. They will be motivated by taking on a challenge that no one else has done. In this scenario, you aren't necessarily looking for a person who is motivated by where the office is. That's not to say that a person who is motivated by location isn't a good fit, but it means if they say several times over the course of the conversation "I've always wanted to work in your city." Or "I'm sick of paying for downtown parking" they might be missing the point of what your needs are, and they aren't listening. Don't get swept up in that conversation, if they can't tell you the types of work-related challenges they've dealt with and solutions they've been a part of. 

Does this make sense?

Then the L - Location. Location is totally a viable factor, and can be a main source of your advertising, but you still need to get the job done. If you discover that most of your staff has taken the job due to the fact they can work from home, or because they are moving to a different city and their family is there. This can be a great factor if you don't have competitors in your area. While this is a motivating factor for many people, I still take extra caution to ensure the person is capable of doing the work, because if they are motivated by factors that aren't work related, you might have a problem on your hands. 

A is for Advancement. This is a great motivator for larger companies. And if you are quickly growing, a person who is competent and wants to climb the ladder, absolutely, look for someone who is motivated by that carrot. Do be aware though, that many candidates, especially recent college graduates who are specifically looking for that. Colleges and business programs often fail here when they are teaching students. I've dealt with several college seniors who want to work for a small business, but they want to do a management rotation program. It's really funny when they want to do a management rotation program because they don't know what area of business, they want to work in. This is just not something that happens at a formal level in small business, at least I've never seen it. Plus, you don't want your full staff advancement motivated… because your turnover will spike up each time there is an open position. If advancement is part of your culture, you'll only want 10-20% of your employees motivated by that potential.

Pay up! It's the money part, M. Here's the deal, I don't buy into the ideology of "do what you love, and the money will follow!" Nor do I buy into the concept that "People should be happy to have a job." I think those are both very American ideals, and if you want to enrich your culture, people who come from other countries have a lot to teach us about this. Years ago, I had a manager who was Bilingual, Spanish/English. He was reviewing a type of online character assessment program that was supposed to filter out unethical behavior. So, he was testing its Spanish capabilities, and ruled against using the program. Why? Because all of our employees from various areas of Latin America would have failed the test. The test asked questions about stealing, but it didn't say "Do you steal from your employer?" it would ask "Do you take from your employer?" or some variation of that question. The work in Spanish translated into a concept. The concept for someone who is from Latin America really come across as "of course I take from my employer! I give them my time and my talent, and I take their money!" of course the question on the test gave no context around it. He took it as one of our non-native English speakers, and failed. 

I digress. But money. Money is viable reason to go to work. Not everyone who is a hard worker is passionate about what they do. If they show up, are reliable, do a great job, they deserve money for the job. Maybe the money is to support their backyard chicken breeding hobby. Or maybe it's to ensure their family is on the right benefits plan. Whatever it is, don't rule out someone who is about money if they can do the job, and fit the culture relatively well. 

The final letter - S is for Security. I don't mind working with people who are security minded, but I do take note that many people who are security minded, they don't always tackle challenges with a robust mindset, and probably need a bit of routine in their day, or a highly routine position. Which is great. They are the steady eddys of the world. These are the people you want working side by side with your Advancement motivated people. They'll train them to do the job, they have the keys to the tribal knowledge of your company. They'll show up prepared, they're reliable, and generally are a plethora of information. Stability minded people hate, HATE, looking for new jobs. Often, they are embarrassed by it. 

I use CLAMS a lot when matching people into departments, positions, selling what the position is about. When I key in what the person's motivator is, I can then cross reference, and reinforce what they will receive as a result of doing their job well. Because again… recruiting is sales. 

Now, what was the twist I came across recently. Before I started my new position, I was a 1099. I was communicating with the CEO about this tool one day, in that I am more on the C side of this acronym. He took the acronym a different way, still a sales principle though, and used the whole thing in discussion. 

"What kind of challenge will keep you engaged?"

"We need you on-site multiple days a month. Can you travel to various locations as needed?"

"What type of advancement do you need? Are you interested in moving up?"

"How much do you need to make to stay here, and be engaged?"

"What does stability mean to you?"

The last part of the discussion threw me for a loop. But you know what? We had an open discussion about what it would mean for me to leave, and what that would look like, and what kind of notice and conversation needs to take place, prior to an exit. It was really fabulous to have that information on the table. 

Now there are other things that are motivators in interviews. And many times, candidates think they are motivated by one specific thing, but they really aren't. They are motivated by the romanticism of something, or their friends told them to be motivated by that "thing." OR… they are just saying it because it sounds good. Like the time a candidate told me he really wanted to work in a team environment, because he was solo at his current position. Sounds fine on the surface, until I started talking to him about his manager, and some of his co-workers. It became apparent that he fought and argued with all of them. Didn't like their ideas. Felt he wasn't appreciated, etc. I'm sure it was a two-way street there. The result was that he incorrectly thought that being on a team with others with the same skill set meant that people would see things his way. I told the recruiter who sent him my way that specific information. I remember the recruiter was a bit taken aback that I got all that information from a candidate in 30 minutes. He'd spent more time with him prior to my interview and bought into the fact that the guy wanted to work on a team. Why? because he believed the answer and didn't get context behind the answer. 

This is why I talk about using follow up questions. If you present the concept of CLAMS openly, what's going to happen is most people will claim to be challenge motivated. And most people aren't. You really need to find out what challenge means. Like the time I was working with a third-party recruiter and expressed that I needed challenge motivated people. Suddenly, I had three candidates who only talked about challenge. The recruiter had coached them all to say the right things. I started digging, one person really wasn't up for the challenge, they told me that challenge means there will always be a job. Well, that simply isn't true. Sometimes challenges are problems that get solved, and then go away, and the challenge motivated candidate moves on. That's fine. What I was sitting across from was a person who needed predictability, safety and security in their job. And this environment, specifically this department they were interviewing for, was none of those. 

And yes, I told the recruiter to stop prepping the candidates that way. Pro tip: don't be afraid of being direct with your recruiter, most of them are relieved they don't have to peel information out of you. This wasn't one of those times though.

Okay, to wrap this up. There are lots of tools out there. Implementing all of them takes time, effort, and understanding of human behavior. As you know, if you listened to my Episode 000, my hope is you can take one idea from each podcast and use it in a way that enriches your selection process, your training process, your mentoring process. So, keep this acronym in the back of your head when you interview, start noticing what lights candidates up. Remember the fishing analogy? This is where the rod flexes. It still has structure; it's not going to break. But it flexes… let the candidate run that line out for a while, then reel them back in, keeping flexibility.

CLAMS and fishing… it really is what recruiting is about.