To ensure that you are selecting people who are a fit with your culture, evaluate your hiring practices. You want to hire people who will be a fit with the Core Culture—who find the work meaningful and are in harmony with the values of the culture.
To screen for culture fit, consider these five questions about your recruitment and selection practices:
- Do recruitment materials reflect the Core Culture?
- Do recruitment practices—before and after the candidate interview– support the Core Culture?
- When meeting with job applicants, do you talk about the organization’s culture?
- Do you model the Core Culture when meeting with candidates?
- Do you interview for culture fit?
Evaluate your recruitment materials to support culture fit
Do recruitment materials reflect the Core Culture?
The way to get the right employees is to start out with a lot of good choices. Having well-constructed recruitment messages providing details that illuminate the culture of the workplace can affect job seekers’ perceptions of fit and thus influence their intentions to apply for positions (Roberson, Collins, & Oreg; Journal of Business and Psychology, 2005).
Think about the print materials you produce for job applicants as well as your internet communications. Because the internet is a commonly used resource for finding jobs, evaluate how you communicate online with potential applicants. Examine your website and the job applicant portal, in particular, as well as your pages on Facebook, Linked In, blogs or your communications through Twitter and others. Are you communicating your Core Culture beliefs at the first step of the recruitment process? Do those materials and communications align with your Core Culture? Do they share the Purpose, Philosophy and Priorities of your organization? Do they make it clear what’s important to your company, its contribution and character?
One example of aligning a recruitment message with the culture is the following information taken from the Disney website for job applicants. Disney is a company known for its Purpose—to make people happy—and they do it through the distinctive Philosophy of imagination. Disney is a place where they make dreams come true. On their website for job applicants it stated,
Welcome to The Walt Disney Company! Yes, there really are dream jobs. Here, the bottom line is imagination, our culture is magic and wonder, and required previous work experience: childhood dreams. Think of all the laughter, astonishment, joy and thrills that have come from this one place. Movies, Animation, News and Sports, Music, Television, Books, Theme Parks and Resorts. After all, a company built on imagination and wonder means the work will be interesting. And always will be. There’s room for talented people. It’s a dream job.
Their website for job candidates already begins the screening process to bring in people who are the right fit for their culture.
Communicating the company’s Purpose and values upfront helps filter out candidates who are not a fit. Your recruitment materials are a valuable resource for sharing your Core Culture in the first step of the hiring process.
[For continuation of Hiring for Culture Fit discussion, read the next post on topic: Part 5]This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
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