What’s your company culture and does it still fit?
When you’re looking for someone to join your company, you work out your business needs, decide on a job title, write a job description etc. etc.. and then you get your Recruitment team onto finding you some potential candidates. Oh and of course you decide on a salary bracket, reporting structure, targets …oh, if only it was as simple as that!
So, what is the ‘Cultural Fit’?
When we talk about the Cultural Fit we mean a company’s culture – their working habits, values and company beliefs.
The term has been bandied about for a long time and it has been something we’re very adept at recognising at Dovetail. We understand our clients’ company culture and the sort of candidate they are looking for. I’d say it’s one of the reasons our clients’ come back to us again and again and it has been a key factor in finding that ‘perfect fit’ candidate.
The importance of Cultural Fit was confirmed by a survey of CEOs who lead companies on Fortune’s 2017 100 Best Companies to Work for list, who said the attribute they looked for most often was “cultural fit.”
So, how do you work out your company’s cultural fit?
At Dovetail, we often have a feeling of what or who feels right when we are shortlisting candidates for interviews. It’s down to knowing the company really well, which can only be done over a decent period of time. Building a close working partnership with clients is invaluable for everyone, it’s something we pride ourselves on at Dovetail and it’s a key part of finding that ‘perfect fit.’
But you need to formalise your company’s culture and the values and mission of the firm are a good place to start. When recruiting you need to assess how a potential candidate fits with these during interviews.
Miriam Park, Director of Amazon’s University recruiting was recently interviewed by CNBC, she says:
“When interviewing candidates, they look for applicants who align with company-wide beliefs, which include: customer obsession, ownership, curiosity and thinking big.
Park added that the retail giant receives a high volume of applicants for each role because the company “keeps millennials‘ voracious appetite satisfied. We have phenomenal thought leaders and we have built a brand that’s amazing,” says Park, “It’s a very dynamic environment because we are growing at a fast rate.”
Source: Recruitment Grapevine
This sounds like the right approach. Adapting to attract the right candidates who are of the right mindset to take your company forward.
Yet on the flip side, ‘cultural fit’ is being dropped by some companies…
“Some companies are beginning to drop the idea of culture fit altogether. As more companies shift their recruiting focus towards intentional diversity and inclusion efforts, they’re reframing their thinking to how diverse candidates can add to their culture – not fit into it.”
Forbes.com
Some companies now view the notion of cultural fit as outdated and see it as a trap that they can fall into. Leading them to be unintentionally biased, rather than diversifying their workforce, they look for prospective employees based on their similarity to certain company, or perhaps even personal values.
This can, in fact, be detrimental to an organisation, as it narrows their vision, when the aim is the opposite.
“Organisational culture comes about in one of two ways. It’s either decisively defined, nurtured and protected from the inception of the organization; or — more typically — it comes about haphazardly as a collective sum of the beliefs, experiences and behaviors of those on the team. Either way, you will have a culture. For better or worse.
Once the company culture has been defined, ideally every action, strategy, decision and communication should support the cultural beliefs — including all HR mechanisms from recruitment and hiring processes to performance review systems.” Forbes.com
So, ensure your cultural fit isn’t limiting – revisit your company’s vision and mission and incorporate it into your definition of your company culture, review it and formalise it and I think rename it too!
We quite like ‘the perfect fit’ :0)…
Sources:
Recruitment Grapevine
Forbes.com
Related Dovetail ‘HR & Recruitment’ blogs:
Job Market Report South
The Art of Onboarding
Tackling the Gender Pay Gap
The Taylor Review – a summary
