The One Character Trait That Employers Are Now Desperate For

Hurst said his company offers assessments to help hiring managers test for behaviors that demonstrate purpose orientation. But, in the absence of such tests, he suggested probing at three different areas of interviewees’ future and past career plans:

1. Retirement: “Purpose-oriented people don’t think of retirement as a desirable outcome,” he said. “They see life as doing always some kind of work and providing value to the world.”

That isn’t to say companies should only hire workers who never want to stop working. But if a potential employee’s main motivator for going to work every day seems to be keeping warm the nest egg he or she hopes to retire on, that person may not value the meaningfulness of work in the moment.

2. Work history: “What changes did they make, and why?” Hurst said. “Were they trying to make more money and get a bigger title? Or were they looking to maximize their impact?”

3. Friendships in the office: “A lot of purpose-oriented people tend to make a lot of friends at work,” he said. “If you’re interviewing someone who is still in touch with people from previous jobs, you’ll start to see some people driven by purpose.” 

But there’s more at play here than an employer being highly selective during the hiring process. Purpose-driven people gravitate toward companies and organizations with a social mission, so if a company wants to attract purpose-driven workers, it must find its own purpose. 

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter reincorporated last month as a public benefit corporation, a relatively new corporate structure that prioritizes a social mission — in this case, funding creative projects — over profit. Since then, visits to Kickstarter’s jobs page are up 33 percent. 

In April, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, known for his strong sense of corporate responsibility, took on Indiana’s controversial “religious freedom” law, the original version of which critics said would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people. Employees at the cloud-computing giant rallied behind Benioff, who lobbied legislators to can the legislation and vowed to move out of the state any workers who opposed the law. 

At Kind Snacks, the maker of high-end fruit and nut bars, the workplace culture is so built on “unremitting loyalty and trust” that some employees give two years‘ notice before leaving.

“There’s an obligation on the part of the employer to be a purposeful company,” Tavis said. “That way, you’re connecting into an ecosystem of job seekers looking for purpose and purposeful companies looking for workers with purposeful orientation.”