“They just didn’t fit the culture”- this is the most common excuse when someone leaves shortly after joining a new company. No matter if you’ve hired a couple people in the past year or hundreds of people, the hiring process is always a challenge and by now you know how much time, energy and money it can take. So what is culture fit and why is it so important?
There are many definitions of “culture fit”, but it is most commonly defined as whether a candidate will adapt to the existing organizational culture. This is tricky, because every company defines “culture” differently. However, there are some universal principles that can help guide hiring managers towards making the right decisions on hiring employees that will be a good cultural fit for their team.
Culture fit ensures a person’s own values and preferences are compatible with the norms and practices of the company and the other employees. This has nothing to do with hiring cookie cutter people that all look and act the same, but rather hiring people with shared values and compatible preferences.
At Neurolytics, we spend a lot of time focusing on hiring for culture fit and here are 3 tips you can use when selecting recruitment candidates.
Hire for values – Can you define your company’s purpose and values? Do you know what keeps your most loyal employees onboard? The mission and vision of your company is important to your employees, so make sure you communicate your company values and share this with your candidates. Ensure you include values based questions in your interviewing process.
Hire for diversity – When creating high performing teams ensure there is alignment in norms and value, not age, gender, or diversity of work preferences. Diversity has been shown to lead to better performance from all team members, because people can build trust based on common purpose and values. In addition, they can learn and grow from people that have different backgrounds and experiences from them.
Hire for skill – Research supports the idea that team members are most likely to perform best in jobs that align with their preferences. By building a team of people that have the same job responsibilities, their preferences should actually be more similar to each other.
Culture fit is about cultural alignment. It’s about whether a candidate is going to be a good match for the organization, its people, and its values. Ultimately, culture fit is about whether or not the candidate will be able to continue to perform well in the role. Lastly, measure your success. Interview the people who are thriving in their role and ask them why? Ask managers and leaders which skills they value most and ensure you use culture fit to analyze your hiring decisions and continue to iterate and improve on your results.
Let us know what you think? What has worked for you? Why do you think cultural fit is important?
