Discovering Culture + Values
photo by: didbygraham
We recently uncovered an article on The Ladders about questions to ask to discover the culture of your prospective employer. As they say, “company culture is everything. You can’t work where you don’t fit.”
Bravo.
Their questions are great for a prospective job seeker, but we want to offer up a few points on how to view this from the company’s point of view. After all, culture is a two-way street.
Culture ultimately comes down to what is valued. From a company’s point of view what is valued is what gets rewarded (not always, but it should be).
Every new person who walks through your doors will change the culture. If it’s a new CEO, she’ll change it a lot. If it’s a new marketing assistant then the sphere of influence will be much more limited.
So how do you identify what a prospective new hire values?
- Ask about mentors. Have them describe a person they look to for mentorship (even informally). What is it about the person they admire and try to emulate? Get the candidate to list the six or seven attributes that person has that are worth emulating.
- Rate themselves against their mentor. Then ask the candidate to rate themselves against their mentor on those six or seven attributes.
- Utilize the resume. Believe it or not, resumes can be used for things other than skills and accomplishments. Look for patterns in their work. Did they constantly create something new, did they improve existing processes or do they talk about how they got more out of a team?
- Ask them to talk through their obituary. Okay, maybe morbid (try retirement announcement if that’s less so) and maybe a little out of left field. But the idea is to get them to think about the things of which they are most proud. These will announce their values loud and clear.
- Where and when were they most successful? At which job were they most successful? Ask them to describe the environment. What contributed to their success? What were the people like around them? What were their best traits?
At RoundPegg we’re objectively quantifying culture to provide a rigorous data point which you can use in the interview. Please contact us if you’d like to find out more about using it in your interviewing process – info [at] roundpegg [dot] com.
What other techniques have worked well to identify what an individual values in the past?
No related posts.
