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Passion: What is it & Why Should Employers Care?

by | May 4, 2017 | blog

Passion is a buzz word that’s been thrown around a lot in 2016, that I don’t think is going away in 2017. Passionate employees, passionate partners, but what does it actually mean to be passionate and why is it important?

What is Passion?

Passion is more than just an excitement for something. It’s an obsession that you can’t seem to shake, even when things are challenging. Passion is the drive inside of each of us.
The word Entrepreneur is believed to have roots in the Sanskrit Word “Antha Prarena” which means “Inner-Motivation“. While the origins of this word are debated, one thing that everyone can likely agree on is that entrepreneurs work out of an “Inner Motivation”, or what I like to call… passion.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur to have passion. I use this as an example when trying to explain what it means to be passionate about something as it relates to a career. There is an inner motivation, obsession, driving force that keeps you coming back for more each and every day.

Who has it & how can you find it when hiring?

Personally, I’ve never found that passion can be trained or learned. I’ve consistently found that I can teach a lot of things, but passion (specifically in my case, for helping businesses grow) is either there or not.

Not sure what to look for? Here are some things that stand out to me when determining if someone has the passion that karma digital needs:

Are they excited when talking about non-work topics? Everyone (or mostly everyone) appears to be excited about work during an interview, I’ve found the difference with passionate people is that excitement carries over into other areas of their life and they get excited when talking about things they enjoy in their life (such as hobbies).They are always trying to grow and develop, both in life and career. Passionate people don’t settle- they are always trying to learn, move up, and get in closer alignment with their core values. Don’t mistake this “seeking more” for climbing the corporate ladder (although that may also be true), growth and development to passionate people may not always come in the form of climbing the corporate ladder and often manifests in personal growth. Be sure to get to the root of career risks, changes, and opportunities they’ve taken and why.

They tend to have positive expectations- I don’t mean they are naturally positive people, but in general, they set high expectations and have a positive outlook on pursuing their passions.

Why does passion matter?

Hiring passionate people is increasingly important when expectations of careers and employers are the highest they’ve ever been. People today value their time, we spend over 40 hours a week every week “working”. We look to our careers to fulfill us in ways that past generations never thought of, and we want to surround ourselves with people and companies that align with personal passions more and more. For employers, when you find a team who shares your passion they will prioritize “work” over other things, because they enjoy it. Your team will provide better results and work harder, because they have an inner motivation pushing them.

Monika Choudhary

Web Developer

Monika is competent professional with 10+ Years of Experience in the Website Design and Development. She is having a great expertise in developing responsive e-commerce, real estate, social networking, jobs portals, classified, corporate based websites & her expertise includes WordPress, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Laravel. She is detail oriented, driven worker who enjoys fixing code and creating something beautiful websites from scratch. Quality Work & On time delivery is always her aim. Always trying to achieve client satisfaction level, she will not only work with you to develop an amazing website with high coding standards, she will also ensure it engages with your potentials to drive more conversions and leads.

"What does karma mean to you?"

"To me, Karma is the result of a person's actions and I believe that what happens to a person, happens because they caused it with their actions. Doing things with a good intention is what matters to me the most and that is what I always remember when working for my clients. I have realized that in this industry where there is a lot of competition around, I am working for my clients with a good heart and a positive vibe. That's what keeps me going."

"Who is your dream client and why?

"My dream client would be a company or an organization who passionately wants to build a strong online presence in the digital world. The one that’s easy to work with and that inspires you and makes work not feel like work is the dream client for me. I would love to guide them from the initial stage to build up their recognition through clean and advanced coding on the web."

Leighton Hendrick

Digital Marketing

+20 years of marketing, public relations, communications, advertising and internal and outside sales experience.

Extensive experience in developing and managing all levels of product and offering campaigns including marketing collateral, Web site content, SEO, paid media and social, inside sales call campaigns, sell sheets and management of campaign success metrics.

Demonstrated success in launching new products and corporate brands, developing demand generation programs, and creating internal and external communication pieces.

Exceptional collaborator with the ability to build relationships with trade media and manage large-scale corporate initiatives and events.

Proven ability to create and manage lead generation and call campaigns that result in the successful conversion of new and unique clients. Creator and Editor-In-Chief of IT Compliance Magazine, a quarterly publication with over 2,500 international C-Level readers.

Cassie Boca

Founder, CEO

Cassie taught herself SEO in 2006 when she was working at a small business that needed to increase visibility but didn’t have any budget. She understands the financial challenges startups and small business have in that they have to wear every hat and prioritize what they work on based on what will have the largest impact to the business. There are never enough hours in the day, but consistently Cassie found her time spent increasing rankings in organic search, ensuring locations and contact info was accurate online, building positive reviews, and spreading positive news about the companies she worked at.

In the last 10+ years, Cassie has seen it all, but always comes back to her passion for helping inspirational companies grow. As a consumer, she tries to limit her purchases to companies she believes in (ok, she still goes to Target… she’s a human) because as consumers we have the ability to help companies succeed. If we all purchased from companies that aligned with our personal beliefs, not only would companies step up but we’d see a shift in the brands that we interact with daily. She calls this being a “conscious consumer”… sometimes we think she made that phrase up, but the more time we spend with her the more we find ourselves buying only from companies we know the founders or love their mission.

Enough business talk, Cassie is passionate about connecting with like-minded people, traveling and is a pretty badass skier. She loves to chase winter seeking powder fields, and on a powder day you may even get a FaceTime call from a chairlift or the backcountry.

What does karma mean to you?

To me, karma is the intention behind our actions. Good karma, to me, means doing things with good intent, a pure heart, and positive energy. When starting a company, it was critical that I start it with good karma. In writing our mission statement you’ll see that our mission has the intent of helping consumers find companies they are proud to wear their logo or recommend to a friend…what I call being a conscious consumer. When I realized my intent behind starting this company was coming from a place of wanting to increase visibility of companies putting good into this world, I knew we had to include karma in the name.

Who is your dream client and why?

My dream client isn’t a company any of us have heard of. I’d love to hear from a young startup doing something inspirational, I mean, my passion is for increasing visibility so it’s not much of a challenge if a company comes to me and they are already hugely successful.

If I had to pick a company that already exists, it would be Charity Water. Their mission and vision inspire me so much, I had all of my wedding guests make a donation there instead of buying us gifts. But again, Charity Water has great visibility already so I’d love to find a company that isn’t there yet where I feel we can change the trajectory of their company through the work we do.