Creating a positive and affirming company culture is an important aspect of attracting top talent and retaining the best employees. Human resources departments have a responsibility to seek out and hire candidates whose personal values align with those of the company in order to ensure that they contribute favorably to the organization and its culture. When employees join an organization and are not a cultural fit, tension may arise between the employee and colleagues, as well as the managers. The tension can result in a hostile and unproductive work environment where neither side feels fulfilled. On the other hand, when values align and complement one another, the resulting synergy can create an especially creative and innovative work environment.

Determining a Company’s Culture

 

Prior to assessing candidates’ cultural fit, HR leaders need to ask themselves several questions about their company so that they can accurately represent it and its culture to potential hires. The first step HR leaders should take is to describe their company’s culture. If an HR professional is struggling to answer this question or the answer is not immediately apparent, then the company may not have a clearly defined culture or different departments may have cultures that do not overlap. On the other hand, if a definitive answer surfaces, HR leaders should challenge themselves to provide a couple examples that confirm this impression. When the company culture is accurately pinpointed, exemplary stories should be plentiful.

Many companies build their culture around those values that they seek most in their employees. HR leaders should think about the most successful people at their company and identify a handful of traits that they all have in common. These common traits often say a great deal about the culture that a company has developed and wishes to maintain in the future. The flip side of this is whether anyone with those traits has ever failed at the company. This failure could point to the type of culture that the company is actively trying to discourage. For instance, a manager could be collaborative, innovative, and optimistic, which are all defining characteristics. However, he may ultimately fail due to his arrogance. This demonstrates the type of personality traits that are necessary to succeed in a company’s culture.

 

Finally, HR leaders should think about what they would want to change about their company’s culture. If all the members of the team have the same answer, this could indicate a flaw in the company’s culture that should be addressed in the future and one that should be recognized when hiring new people. Of course, it is important to obtain input from other teams, since perspectives can change across departments.

Discerning Cultural Fit Through In-Person Interviews

The best way to judge how a person will fit into an organization is to meet in person. The need for quick decisions does not always make this step possible, but especially for upper-level positions, HR professionals may want to consider traveling to conduct an interview, even if it consists of only a brief meeting in a hotel or airport. A brief meeting can demonstrate whether candidates have represented themselves authentically online or not. If a person seems fundamentally different than the impression that he or she has given online, what might be the reason and what does this say about how the candidate will contribute to the company?

 

During the interview, individuals can ask a number of questions to judge cultural fit. Some interviewers prefer a more direct approach and ask what sort of culture the candidate thrives in professionally. This open-ended question can discern whether a person has thought about organizational culture and its importance, and it allows the interviewer to judge how much the organization’s culture aligns with the candidate’s expectations. Candidates who lack self-awareness may trip over this question, which points to how much that individual values organizational culture.

 

Some interviewers prefer to take a different direct approach by asking about a time when a candidate did not feel like a good cultural fit. Ideally, a candidate has thought about why the mismatch occurred and identified the type of organizational culture that would be ideal moving forward. This question can also inform an individual’s capacity for flexibility, problem solving, and critical thinking.

 

Another way to judge cultural fit is with the classic question: Why do you want to work here? Ideally, the candidate has already researched the company extensively and has an idea of the type of culture it tries to cultivate. HR representatives should remember that interviews are a two-way street and that candidates are likewise judging the company and how it aligns with their values. After all, candidates have likely researched the company online, just like the interviewer has researched them.