How do you recognize passion

A subject on which quite a few articles have been written. Some people just plunge into their professional life with 100 % commitment, others call it "their passion." Maybe I am a bit of both, but it’s a fact I find recruitment very interesting and therefore I think about it a lot (in a positive sense). It is not number 1, no, there are a lot of “big Rocks” in life more important, but work in general simply takes a lot of time. Very nice if you do something that you can at least passionately talk about and you are genuinely interested in. In short, what is passion and more importantly from my perspective: how do you recognize it?

I must confess that I am a little allergic to the word “passion,” the great disadvantage of hyped words. Yet on the other hand I’m intrigued by it. There are so many pros and cons articles written about passion that, to my opinion, it doesn’t really matter how you use the term. In any case, I think it's exciting to have a framework that allows you to recognize someone who, from his or her core, is intrinsically interested in their specialty or field. Passion is something personal and cannot be learned. A distinctive quality by which you can recognize a A player .

And that’s my trigger, because in every recruitment process you go for the highest quality possible. Given the high risk of a bad hire, I’m very curious about ideas from others about how to recognize passion in the selection process. It’s clearly transparent for some target groups (marketing, sales), but more hidden under the surface for other target groups (technology or IT). In addition, you may wonder whether what's clearly visible really is the truth. It often works well to ask for multiple personal references (via e.g. the Topgrading method), or to link people with internal A-players during the selection procedure, but for every recruitment procedure and for all target groups you should be wanting to embed the aspect “passion” from the beginning. Difficult, time-consuming and always dependent on the person in question, but not impossible. I am curious about your experiences!

Previously published on talentsourcer.com