Be prepared for the interview question: "What motivates you in life?"

“What motivates you in life?” is a question job seekers should ask themselves regularly if they want to succeed in life. At a minimum, you should always be ready to answer it during job interviews. Describing what motivates you to a recruiter, however, can seem daunting. The best path to finding answers to this question, however, begins with understanding why this question gets asked and getting an understanding of what hiring managers are looking for. That’s exactly what we’ll take a look at here, including guidelines and examples!

In this blog, we dive into

• Why recruiters ask about motivation

• Picking the right motivations for your job interview

• 7 sample life motivations worth bringing up at job interviews

Why do interviewers ask about what motivates you?

Why do job interviewers ask job applicants about their motivations, they’re not just interested in what makes you unique. They’re also trying to see if you’re an employee who would put in the effort at your new workplace. If you show interviewers you’re strongly motivated, they’ll know you won’t get complacent with your work and consistently strive to learn and grow.

Job interviewers will also ask these questions to see if you’ll stick with the company for a while. If the life goals you describe mesh well with the responsibilities of the job and the company’s agenda, recruiters will know you won’t quit your new career on a whim and leave them scrambling to find a new employee.

What motivations should you mention at interviews?

To thrive at the job you’re being interviewed for, you’ll need a motivation that’ll inspire you to work hard even when a task or project is stressful or difficult. These driving motivations can be intrinsic (your work satisfies a personal yearning for comfort, variety, growth, etc.) or extrinsic (i.e. being praised, rewarded, or needed by other people).

If you’re not sure what would motivate you at the job you’re seeking, think about the long-term goals you have and the dreams you want to make real. If there’s a dream that excites you, a goal you can picture yourself achieving, or a creed you’re passionate about, that’s the seed of a motivation you can talk about at your upcoming job interview. Before each interview, research the company to learn what motivations will excite them most based on the guidelines below.

7 Motivations worth bringing up at job interviews

In general, recruiters who ask the interview question “What motivates you in life?” will be very interested in the following desires and aspirations:

1. Being helpful

Many people find joy in being a team player and helping others. Sometimes this help is direct: teaching people useful skills, finding solutions to their problems, offering advice on life goals, or listening to them talk about their troubles. Other professionals might just take pride in knowing that their job brings happiness to others and makes the world a better place.

The motivation to be helpful is very compatible with jobs centered around customer service, trouble-shooting, healthcare, or nonprofit activism. When you talk with recruiters about your desire to be helpful, emphasize your passion for getting to know the people you help and making sure you get them what they need.

2. Rising to the top

The word “ambition” often comes across as sinister in popular media, but a little ambition is not a bad thing in the modern workplace. The desire to become a business leader or innovator can push an employee to excel at their work, network with colleagues and clients, learn promotional skills, and find new ways to help their company thrive.

If the company you’re applying to has clear guidelines for promotion and a diverse workplace culture that rewards creativity, tell recruiters about your desire to rise through the ranks. If you want to be promoted to a management position, talk about your leadership goals and how you’d motivate employees. If you want to eventually transfer to a harder, more rewarding position, talk about the lessons you’d learn from the entry-level position you’re applying to.

3. Self-improvement

Many professionals take pride in a job well done, especially if they’re relying on skills and fields of knowledge they’ve spent years trying to master. Pride in one’s skills can be a powerful workplace motivation with the right mindset; specifically, the mindset that you can always be a little better than you were yesterday. You can talk about your motivation to self-improve at almost any job interview since a desire to learn and grow is a boon at every job. That said, self-growth is a particularly good motivation to bring up if you’re seeking work in knowledge-focused fields such as engineering, science, art, or literature, where professionals are expected to constantly refine their understanding of their “craft.”

4. Being admired

Few motivations are as powerful as the desire to be praised—by your parents, by your teachers, by your boss, or by your followers. In general, working professionals who yearn for approval thrive in public-facing jobs that involve lots of social interaction. Professionals motivated by a love of the spotlight also tend to be good at self-promotion, a handy skill for careers centered around advertising or marketing.

If you want to tell job interviewers about your drive to seek the approval of others, make sure you use language that doesn’t make you come across as an egomaniac. Emphasize to recruiters that you want to earn people’s respect legitimately, with hard work and insight rather than lies and manipulation.

5. Living up to an ideal

Everyone has at least one ideal that they’re passionate about: e.g. a belief that freedom is the right of all sentient beings, that no one should ever go hungry, that lying and cheating degrades the human spirit, etc. If you’re seeking work at a nonprofit organization, a government agency, or a sustainable business dedicated to improving life on earth, recruiters will see your commitment to your ideal as a powerful motivating force. 

At interviews for more profit-focused businesses, ideal-focused motivations are still worth talking about with your recruiter. Describe moments in your past jobs where sticking to your principles helped you resolve conflicts, create a healthier workplace, or build bonds of trust between you and your co-workers. Use these past moments to show interviewers that you’re an employee who can be trusted with important tasks and private information.

6. Financial security

Grand principles and lofty goals aside, a job’s a job, and people work at jobs because they want to earn money. You probably won’t get hired if you tell your interviewer you’re only interested in the job for its money. Still, profit-seeking is a core part of modern business, and talking about the salary/benefits you’d like can help recruiters better understand your background and needs.

If you’ve got a family to support or a chronic medical condition to treat, you can be open with your interviewers about how their job opening would let you support your financial needs. Alternatively, you can talk about long-term goals of yours that the job opening’s salary would support: e.g. moving to a better residence, building up funds to start your own business, and so on. Don’t make recruiters think you’re motivated by money for money’s sake. Instead, show them you want to earn money for a specific, well-thought-out purpose.

7. Enjoying the work itself

Some see their job as a chore. Others work at their job because it’s fun. If you know the job opening you seek will have work you’d enjoy, mention that to your interviewers. They’ll be more likely to hire you, mainly because they know that a professional who’s passionate about their job will put extra effort into it.

When you talk about your motivation to have fun, make sure you tell your interviewers exactly why you’d enjoy the job. Maybe the position would give you a chance to flex your creative muscles. Maybe the position involves talking to interesting people. Maybe the job would let you study a topic you think is cool. Whatever reason you give for enjoying the work, emphasize that you’d find joy in working hard, not in goofing off.

To learn more about the job interview process, take a look at Career.io’s Interview Prep service.

Key takeaways

1. Interviewers ask job seekers questions about their motivation to figure out how hard they’ll work and how committed they’ll be to their company.

2. Life/work motivations can be anything from profit and upholding ideals to more extrinsic desires like being praised by others.

3. When you’re answering questions about “what motivates you in life,” mention real motivations of yours that you think the interviewer will appreciate most.