A company’s culture and value system goes a long way in determining which candidates are the best fit for an organization. Why? Because a company’s culture helps define the norms for expected and accepted behavior within that particular organization.

A lot of companies only have a feeling of what their culture and values are, but they really haven’t defined them. And without that clarity of purpose, without fully understanding what drives the climate of the business and how, it is very difficult to know if a candidate is the right fit.

Let me give you an example. I have a friend that works in a small yet growing company that is driven by trend-setting, forward-thinking, extremely creative people who have the latest in cutting edge technology and are constantly reinventing themselves and their product. The company’s culture is very entrepreneurial and explosive with a high-energy level that can overwhelm the truly faint of heart.

Someone from a well-established, modest yet successful organization that gets the job done, but never pushes the envelope or steps outside the box would probably find my friend’s organization very daunting. Conversely, someone from my friend’s company would be bored in the other environment.

That’s why it is so important to determine what your company culture and value system is in order to identify the candidates that not only have the requisite skills to do the job, but who will acclimate well to the environment.

So how do you integrate your company culture into the hiring process? First, determine what your company’s culture is.

Is your organization…

…results driven or relationship driven?

…internally or externally focused?

…flexible or structured?

Does your organization…

…communicate from the top down or through the grapevine?

…encourage risk or hinder it?

…support change or fight against it?

Next, develop interview questions that will determine each candidate’s fit within the company culture that you have defined. These should be open-ended behavior-based questions that allow the candidate to describe her experiences as well as highlight the business environment.

Here’s an example.

Have you ever suggested ideas that were not accepted by management? What were they? What did you do then? From this set of questions you can determine things like if the candidate is creative, resilient, or flexible and whether these traits are compatible with your company culture.

Finally when conducting reference and background checks, be sure to gather information about the type of environment and culture where the candidate was most successful.

It makes sense that when you hire someone, you make sure that there is a match between the company culture, or company personality if you will, and the candidate’s personality because company culture goes a long way in establishing the type of individual that is most likely to succeed in your organization.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under Interviewing, Company Culture, Hiring. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.