How will you fit for this job?

How do you know if a job applicant will be a good cultural fit?

• Answer:

  Finding an applicant with a good cultural fit for a business has a lot to do with the applicant's attitudes and values. The problem is that the interview process is an ineffective tool for discovering these values and attitudes.  Interviewers and the interview process can be so easily gamed by a shrewd applicant, who does enough background checks to work out what you are looking for and then keeps the act together just long enough to win the job. I have built and managed many businesses and my approach to recruitment was most successful when my selection was based on attitudes not on skills. New skills can be easily taught to a keen learner but changing attitudes takes way too long and invokes too much collateral damage. It's just not commercial to employ someone with the wrong attitudes, even if they tick off all the required skills. The truth is that a person's attitudes and values are only really uncovered on-the-job in both the drudgery and pressure of day-to-day work. It's in this cauldron that a person's true attitudes and values are revealed. In particular their attitudes to others and their attitudes to their own personal and professional development. So the best way to find out is someone is a good cultural fit for a business is to give them the opportunity to prove themselves in the reality of work. Find a way to trial them in real work situations with those they are most likely to be in their team. I know that a trial employment period is easily arranged for someone currently unemployed, but more difficult for someone who needs to resign a current job to work for you. In this situation you might consider after hours engagement with the team or even some virtual engagement over the Internet. Someone who is keen to work for you will happily accommodate these additional assessment plans. Their attitude to this extra assessment, may well reveal right upfront, their ability to fit into your culture. While all my businesses have been in bricks'n mortar, I looked for three things when determining if a person would be a good cultural fit for my business. My questioning in the interview process, even about their skills, was primarily designed to unearth these attitudes. Keenness - Keenness (even a desperation) to work for you is a great marker for a good cultural fit. You instinctively know that these people are highly flexible and will do whatever it takes to be successful in the job that you assign to them. They are culture adopters not resisters. Learners - Everyone you employ will need to learn something about either your product, your processes or your culture. Some will even need to learn additional skills to be successful in the job. Either way you need to select people who have a positive and proactive track record of personal or professional learning and respond easily to questions about what they have been learning recently, on or off the job. People skills - You know by their engagement, responsiveness, humility and even humour in the selection process that they could potentially be a good team player. Applicants with people skills know they must win over the team they work with if they are going to be successful themselves in their assigned job. They respond warmly to the instruction of asking other team players "How can I help?". The good news is that it only takes about 2 weeks of on-the-job engagement to figure out is someone is a good cultural fit. See, no one is capable of holding an act for that long and their true attitudes and values are ultimately revealed in this period. Having already told the applicant at the interview that all I was giving them was an opportunity, I then canvas the opinions of their team after 2 weeks to see if they have been able to turn the opportunity I gave them, into a job with the assigned team.