How defining your company culture can help you find the right hire
What’s your brand? While this might seem like a loaded, marketing-esque kind of question, don’t take it lightly. While your brand includes your tagline, logo, website and how you present yourself to the public, it also includes something that many employers overlook—culture, management and employees. Defining that part of your brand for yourself can help you find the best hiring fit for success.
The right cultural fit breeds success
In a job market where employees are leaving companies faster than ever, it’s vital to ensure a good cultural fit. A cultural fit promotes greater happiness, and happiness correlates with greater productivity. In fact, one psychologist said 89% of employee success is driven by cultural fit, making it the top focus for 43% of companies. Job satisfaction means greater staying power.
Cultural fit and long-term relationships ensure a win-win for both employer and employee. However, both parties have to feel like it’s a good fit for it to be an effective and productive professional relationship. Any time we initiate our recruiting efforts for our clients we take a consultative approach to guarantee a strong candidate fit technically and culturally. Taking the time to ensure that you’ve got the right chemistry boosts productivity, success, and ultimately saves bottom line dollars by reducing employee turnover and retraining costs.
The cost of a bad hire
When you’re trying to run a company efficiently, every dollar and good hire counts. A report from the SHRM Foundation found that the replacement costs incurred from hiring a poor cultural fit ranged from 50%-60% of the employee’s annual salary. And total turnover costs could easily top 200% of their annual salary. The costs of employee turnover for the average company can total as much as 12% of its pre-taxed income.
What is your company all about?
Company culture is based on two vital elements—values and beliefs. These are the starting points that drive your company’s actions, communications and decisions. Company values can affect everything from office layout and perks to post-work activities. When the values of a company align with the personal values of its employees, it infuses energy, purpose and productivity into the day.
Whether working with your team or with consultants, list out on paper what you’re all about. Any potential hire should clearly align with the values you define. If, for example, you value collaboration and create a cubicle-free environment, you could be mixing a recipe for dissatisfaction, poor performance and likely turnover by hiring someone who prefers privacy or low-commotion.
How to hire for your brand
Once you know what you’re looking for, here are a few quick ways to determine who is a serious fit, and who is a turnover risk.
- Emphasize qualities you seek
Experience isn’t everything. Personality and character qualities matter. Rather than basing your hiring on experience alone, state what qualities you are looking for in a new team member. Defining your brand values will help you determine the ideal new hire.
- Get real opinions
Don’t just tell someone about your culture. Show them by taking them on a tour of the office. Giving them the in-the-trenches experience with your team, and exposure to the overall atmosphere and environment, then asking for their thoughts can help you filter out the desperate jobseeker with the canned response.
- Find out what they’re looking for
Perhaps one of the best ways to make sure a potential team member fits your brand is to learn what it is they’re looking for in a workplace. Asking for their analysis of their past company and how they fit in can help provide additional insights into how they might fit with yours.
- Discover their personality
Personality testing can help you move past words to the heart of who a prospect is—and whether or not they will thrive at your company. Run some tests and set a number of meetings with different people in the company. Compare impression notes to determine if there’s a place for those strengths on the team.
Hiring the right person for the job isn’t rocket science. But it will definitely require intentionality in your approach to your company and to the hiring process. Start vetting better candidates immediately by getting in touch with one of our relationship-driven career experts today.