Hiring Skills Get a Good Fit

03/05/07

Executive recruiters agree: When hiring, you first need someone who can do the job. But just as important, you need someone who will fit in with your group—someone who will stick around longer than six months.

“Fit” has nothing to do with color or religion or where the person went to school. It’s all about company culture and the values that shape it.

What’s more, getting a good fit has nothing to do with conformity or ensuring everyone thinks the same way. Organizations that demand conformity tend to have troubles in the long term.

Your job as hiring manager, rather, is to ensure there is nothing about your organization—mission, values, unwritten rules—that a newcomer would find impossible to adapt to (unless you want to shake up the place).

Keeping values and rules in mind as you hire is important if you’re going to find a person who doesn’t have to fight the culture just to get a job done.

Don’t know your values and unwritten rules? Sure you do. The signs are all around you. To uncover them, ask:

What rules do people live by?
Who gets ahead and why?
What do senior executives and the CEO’s talk about all day?

Answers to these questions will help you identify values. Examples:

Positive values: We ship orders same day. We always meet our financial goals. We practice total and complete honesty in all dealings. Employees are to be in on decisions that affect them. We share the wealth, customers above all. People advance on merit.

Neutral values: We are totally disciplined. We are messy and creative. We have fun at work. Work is solemn business. We respect the hierarchy. We circumvent the hierarchy in service of the customer.

Unconstructive values: Always take credit when you can. Undermine anyone in marketing. Tell customers lies if it gets them off your back. Never contradict the boss.

A lot of what you’ll come up with will be neutral values. These characterize what your workplace culture is like—it’s neither right nor wrong, it just is. When you know your values, you can better assess whether a candidate has a chance of a long-term tenure with the company.