Hire Missionaries, Not Mercenaries

I once interviewed a candidate who was so passionate about the opportunity and the company’s mission that he accepted the job before hearing about his compensation package. This blew me away, and I asked why he would do such a thing. His response? “I trust you and assume it will be fair.”

Guess what? I paid him even more than I originally intended, because it was clear to me he would be a missionary for the things we were trying to achieve. He would put the goals of the organization ahead of his personal ambition, and his zeal would set a powerful example for others.

When you’re building an organization with a strong sense of purpose, these are the people you want to hire, not people who are just in it for the money. But how do you make sure you’re finding missionaries, and not getting stuck with mercenaries?

One of my practices is to never use money to convince someone who is ambivalent about joining to join. Mercenaries will jump ship the first time they get a better offer, but missionaries will remain loyal if they have a sense of purpose, feel empowered, and are paid fairly (in fact, they will end up making more money than a mercenary would have). The greatest work comes from those who want to be there in the first place.

I’m not the only one who’s realized this, though. Daniel Pink - the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - explains that financial incentives can actually lead to poorer performance, not better, especially when it comes to cognitive work. According to Pink, intrinsic motivators are far more successful at producing desired work outcomes. These results have been replicated in study after study.

This rings true to me. The best people want responsibility, not just authority. They are driven to learn and to grow, and they want to make a difference by contributing to something larger than themselves.

Missionaries have an unbelievably positive impact on your culture. They join your organization because they feel a deep affinity for what you are trying to achieve, and they inspire others to work even more fervently towards it.

Mercenaries have the opposite effect. Time shows that they only gave lip service to your purpose-driven culture, and will inevitably undercut it.

Here are a few other ways you can tell missionaries from mercenaries:

Pay people to leave: At Zappos, Tony Hsieh came up with the idea of offering customer service agents $3,000 to quit; this was a way of identifying people who no longer had their hearts in their work.

Ask candidates why they want to join you: I look for people who say they are attracted by our mission, people and/or culture. It’s also a positive if they say they’re leaving their current employer because it hasn’t lived up to its mission, and can explain why. If they complain about not getting a promotion or a raise, it’s a red flag.

Never negotiate in response to a financial threat: When a valued employee says he or she got a better-paying offer and threatens to leave even though the job is fundamentally the same, you should consider letting them. They have reached a place where it is all about the money. So as valuable as the employee might be, you need to be cautious of overvaluing their individual worth to the company at the expense of the culture of the organization as a whole.

Marc Lore is the President and CEO of Walmart.com. He founded Jet.com and Diapers.com.