Hi all,
For example (just an example), it will be a huge waste of time and money if a Ph.D candidate in physics at MIT becomes bored with academia or is scared away and withdraws. Then how can we tell if someone is really motivated for such a career before a decision on recruitment is made? This may be somehow different from general motivation. Or is it more practical to find what factors can change one's motivation?
Best
Meng
Progress depends not only on academic issues, but rather on personal factors. If a person is truly convinced that he is fulfilling his mission, he is already satisfied with his self-fulfillment. The ecconomic factor is important but secondary.
Hi Meng,
to optimize career motivation one approach could be to look for candidates with a high person-job fit. One could assess a candidate’s personality using a reliable personality inventory (such as NEO-PI-R) and check if it matches the demands of the job. Of course the demands of the job have to be clearly defined in advance. Using your example, a candidate should be high in conscientiousness (as an indicator for high motivation), low in neuroticism (as an indicator for higher stress tolerance and lower anxiety/withdrawal) and high on openness, especially on the sub-scale “Ideas” (as an indicator for academic interest). Personality inventories surely can be faked to some degree by candidates. Thats why it’s recommended to validate the results by sitting down with the applicant and letting him/her give some specific examples from previous work experience to substantiate the numbers. Besides it’s flaws, this approach is by far the most reliable one (besides IQ-testing) to find the right candidates. Additional inventories that measure e.g. intrinsic motivation can be used as well, of course.
Kind regards
Sebastian
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