Every business is a changing collective with varying requirements as it expands and grows to meet the needs of the organisation and workers. As such, recruiters and business leaders face different hiring needs in terms of both tactical and strategic requirements as well as cultural fit when hiring. Evaluating your office culture, finding people that complement it and help other workers evolve is key to growing a strong business.
Record levels of employment means making the right hire for each and every role a vital part of recruitment, seeking people who meet your business values and core principles. Finding those people and what they stand for can be a challenge for tech recruiters.
As a business grows in size and operations, it can change dramatically. A startup might be focused on intense productivity and long, possibly crazy, working hours, with highly passionate founders and early-stage team members putting together that first product or service.
That level of effort usually calms down to a pattern where the productivity is spread out across a larger workforce or teams, who have wider interests than the founders when it comes to the business and are further removed from the core of the business. At this point having clearly-stated core business values is key to engaging all within the business and promoting it to new hires.
With each passing “generation” of hires, the needs of every successful company transform from the ad hoc, high ambition and frenetic pace of the early years. They move to an operating level where experienced leaders are hired to bring stability to the board, to bring credibility and appeal to investors. And, where talent and new workers can move it onto the next stage, with a more solid platform, new ideas and longer-term goals.
As the business settles down, knowing the culture through evaluation will help you hire the right people for the right part of the company’s evolution. And finding out the cultural profile of your hires will ensure they fit into the business, and aren’t likely to vanish during probation due to recruit’s remorse.
What is your company’s cultural fit?
Small businesses with less than 50 employees can often maintain their startup culture and ad hoc business operations. But, when expanding beyond that number, various rules and regulations see the business have to act in a more mature manner, offering pensions and other benefits. It also becomes harder to recruit people on spec, and talented hires will expect a string of benefits that may evolve pay structures across the business.
At some point, passed the 100 hires, any company should have a solid HR team in place to manage many of these issues and handle recruiting, business expansion and helping to better define the company’s culture. There’s a world of psychology that goes into this, read more on that here.
Recruiting Talent With the Right Fit
When recruiting, the HR person/team or business leaders for any size of company need to measure the fit of the prospect with the company. The key to measuring their fit to yours is to assess their key values and see if they align with those of the business.
A company’s core values can be stated on day one, or added as it expands and has time to think about its place in the world. Google’s “don’t be evil” is perhaps the most (in)famous, but values can focus on integrity, loyalty, empowerment and growth. Atlassian’s “Be the change you seek” is an impressive effort.
By asking questions during the interview process that explore a potential recruit’s values you can see if they align with the company’s, as well as their achievements and stated goals. A good way to establish their values is to get them to write about them during the application process, and then ask during an interview about how they go about demonstrating them either through hard or soft skills in their previous work or current role.
Cultural fit can also be measured by having people on the team they would be working with as part of the interview process, probably during a first interview. While HR will be aware of the core values and wider needs of the business, a potential co-worker can judge if they will fit in with the day-to-day dynamics of a team.
Consider the values and cultural fit of each potential recruit, and eliminate those from a pool to help build a tight-knit and productive business. Finally, in some cases, be prepared to compromise, a genius-level candidate or someone with highly specific skills you need might not score an exact match on core values or cultural fit, but their value and contribution will outweigh a little extra effort in fitting them in the business. Jack Welch is a master on business culture and well worth reading his opinions, when it comes to the nuances of soft and hard culture.
At the end of the day, deciding how to access the Cultural Fit of your candidates, will dictate their success and satisfaction at the company. The strategy that better fits your business model, however, has to be well-thought and developed internally. Are you and your team ready to take on this challenge and properly integrate the Cultural Fit in your recruitment process’?
To further discuss this complex recruitment topic, come and join us at the Tech Hiring Conference to hear more about it from experts, and the experiences of your fellow executives.
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