Assessing a candidates fit to your company culture is about more than finding the perfect “worker bee.” Culture is define as the values, traditions, and beliefs of a religion, group or organization. Workplace culture is the character and personality of your specific organization. It’s what makes your organization unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes of those who work for your company. The sum of the each individual is what makes the whole, and as the leader of your company, you set the standard for how you want your company culture to look like. Here are some tips to find candidates that will fit in with your workplace culture.
Know What Your Company Culture Is
There are many ways to assess a company’s current culture; from conducting an extensive organizational assessment or audit to simply sitting down and thinking through what types of people have succeeded in the company. Try to identify the most common characteristics among your staff. What has made them successful? Have those characteristics helped make your company successful? In what ways? Do those characteristics and values contribute to team success? Have any de-valued or under-minded others, weakening the collective strength of your company? These questions can help you determine what type of company culture you have, or at least what type of culture you don’t want to have.
The Job is More than a Description
As a hiring manager, you need to have a clear understanding about what you are looking for in a candidate, beyond the skills and basic requirements listed in the job description. Come up with a complete inventory of what you need of a candidate beyond the job. If the workplace culture were to change, can the candidate change with it? Think beyond the scope of resume and your basic criteria; see what your company is currently and how they will fit in. This will be an enormous help to you when it comes time to find the best fit for your work culture.
There’s More Than 1 Way to Interview Candidates
Some areas of fit and personality are more easily assessed than others. For example, you might be able to see that the candidate can handle high stress situations from your interview with them. Maybe they have a calm demeanor during tough questioning, but that doesn’t help you assess their flexibility to challenging situations or whether they can work as a team player. There are many ways to find out how well a candidate will fit with your organization. Mark questions ahead of time that will specifically relate to or help assess someone’s ability to work as a team player, or what they do in their free time. Does the candidate volunteer or get involved with their community? How do they feel about past bosses—did they have a favorite or least favorite and why? Maximize the interview as much as possible. It is also a good idea to ask for at least three references. This will help give you a sense (a broad spectrum) of what that candidate was like in other work atmospheres. Conduct more than one interview, and if possible schedule one of them for outside of the workplace. For example, if you’d like to see how the candidate gets along with potential colleagues, ask them to join a team for an event or “shadowing” for a day.
It’s important to take these three steps in helping you find the right candidates—not only for the job itself but for your company as a whole. WorkSource, a WRC-certified premier staffing agency, is committed to the highest standards of quality. Our resident staffing experts will help you vet candidates and identify the best fit for your company. Contact our team at WorkSource today.
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