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Effective screening for culture fit can reduce the anguish people experience and minimize the cost and toll on organizations. Below are eight examples of how to assess for culture fit in unique ways.
1 – Atrion, a fast-growing high-tech company in Rhode Island, takes it a step further. Final candidates for senior positions are asked to present their own personal values to the executive team and explain how they developed them.
2 – AppleTree, a fast-growing customer service call center, pre-screens candidates around alignment with their values. On their on-line application, they list their six values along with this question: Tell us a story about how you have lived one of these values. Although the question is optional, any candidate who doesn’t answer is eliminated.
3 – Nick’s Pizza and Pub employs a lot of teenagers and many walk in to apply. The cover of the application has their purpose and values. When candidates turn their application in, they are asked what stood out for them as they reviewed the company’s purpose and values. Depending on their answer, this will determine if they get an interview because Nick’s Pizza and Pub is first and foremost a purpose and values-driven company.
4 – Heineken is known for The Candidate Interview in which a real-time simulation is set up that test whether an individual would display the qualities and behaviors needed for a particular job.
5. –Edmunds.com explains their secret sauce, office culture, how they design products, their history and much more.
6. – Hubspot has a culture page that showcases their 128-page culture deck. After reading this deck, it will be rather apparent if you are attracted to this type of culture.
7. – Snapchat on the jobs page has a video with team members talking about what it is like to work at Snapchat and how their location (Venice, CA) adds to their way of being.
8. – Last, recently I came across these four brilliant questions to ask to assess culture fit.
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Beyond being explicit on your application and/or website about your company culture, or having an experiential component during interviews, companies must also help new hires navigate the culture.
Below are three recommendations:
1. -Assign a buddy starting for the first six months. This should be someone who is a peer from a different department. This creates a safe space to ask what may seem obvious questions including asking why things are done a certain way.
2. -Managers to conduct more formal check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 days to see how new hires are integrating and how they might help them.
3. -Train managers and team members to recognize if there may be a culture fit issue. People need to be trained to:
- Recognize the symptoms they might see or experience. Often when a team member is complaining or becoming bitter, they have not yet recognized that it is a bad match. Conversely, if team members are complaining and frustrated with an individual, it may be the team who has not recognized that there is a bad match. Expose them to what I call a misfit slide, which is what an individual often experiences.
- Understand the distinction between someone who holds different values than the company, which causes unhealthy friction versus someone who is different than the majority.
- Be aware of ways to have the conversation with a person about culture fit.
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What can you do as a manager and organization to improve and innovate how you assess and track for culture fit? Please share any other ways companies screen and track for culture fit below.
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Photo: GettyImages