Hiring for culture fit is one of the latest buzz word phrases to hit the business world. But it’s an important one. Finding people to fit into your company culture is critical in this day and age. Hiring the best person for the job doesn’t always mean hiring the right person to fit into your company and culture.
Here are five tips to hire for culture fit.
- Define Your Corporate Culture. Harvard Business Review says “Culture fit is the glue that holds an organization together. That’s why it’s a key trait to look for when recruiting”. And to do that, you need to define your corporate culture. Define your values, goals and practices. Identify the ways that your employees interact with one another, recognize the business norms of your organization and how employees conduct themselves in the office. It’s critical that everyone in your company can distinguish the traits that align with the company’s values and culture. Then you’ll know what to look for when recruiting.
- Why Fit is Key. This is critical because someone who shares the same values and core beliefs is likely to have greater long term job satisfaction and will save you thousands of dollars in turnover costs. Group dynamics can easily become contentious if someone has an alternate value system or goals. Whereas focusing on a value and goal match will increase the likelihood that an existing team will easily acclimate with a new employee and exceed expectations.
- Market Your Culture How do you do this? It’s time to start promoting your corporate culture. Showcase your environment on your social media channels and on your website career pages. Let people see and read about your environment so they can “self-select” in or out of what your company very clearly stands for and exemplifies. Showcasing your brand during the interview process is another critical component for future employees to understand what type of environment they would be coming into.
- Hire for Culture Not Skill Skills can be taught but attitude can be a game changer. Anyone, or most anyone, can learn to code or answer the phones or handle some of the tasks that you’re hiring people to do, but finding people who will fit in while doing them is another thing all together. Asking questions in the interview to understand how a new person adjusts to group dynamics and a new environment will help you weed out those who wouldn’t “fit in”. Learning more about the candidate and what motivates them rather than just their technical hard skills will pay off in the long run.
- Don’t Forget About Onboarding and Retention, Too. You’ve invested time and energy in attracting and hiring this great new employee. Be sure to arm them with the tools from day one that they need to be as successful as possible in their new role. Lunches with executives to reinforce values as well as welcome kits, vision and mission statements and how they came about will help set your new employee up for greater success. It’s a journey and needs to be managed that way.
Is your company hiring for cultural fit?
