Discovering Culture + Values

photo by: didbygraham

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?

  1. 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.
  2. Rate themselves against their mentor. Then ask the candidate to rate themselves against their mentor on those six or seven attributes.
  3. 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?
  4. 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.
  5. 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?

Posted by brentdaily on March 29, 2010 | Add a comment | Culture, Fit, Hiring, Values

What is RoundPegg?

At RoundPegg we recognize that ‘A’ players are largely situational.  That is, people perform more effectively and efficiently when they fit the work environment.  When they share values, work style and have a personality that jives with the team.

RoundPegg’s mission is to help companies find the right person to hire based not upon what people have accomplished, but how they’ve accomplished it.  And similarly, to help job seekers understand the environments in which they work best and help them identify the companies where they’ll have the best chance of succeeding.

To learn more download our ‘one page’ PDF.

Posted by brentdaily on March 29, 2010 | 1 comment so far | Fit, Hiring, communication, group dynamics

Your Job Posting Sucks

photo by stevendepolo

photo by stevendepolo

Separating yourself from the pack is not always easy.  Andrew Hyde, TechStars’ Boulder community director, recently published a great post on how to write a resume for landing a startup role. [We've also written about how much your resume currently sucks.  If you're looking for additional tips to the ones Andrew provided it's not a bad read.]

The flip side, as one commenter pointed out, is how a company should write a job posting.  Too often job ads are pure vanilla.  If you removed the logo, a dozen companies could use the same post.

A burger joint in New Zealand nailed it perfectly.  Definitely worth the read.  With that, a few additional thoughts on how to improve your company’s job postings.

  1. Know thyself. Convey what it’s like to work with you and your team. What are the traits of your highly successful people?  With whom do you work best? What is your management style? Don’t bullet what you want instead…
  2. Show your personality. Write a post that attracts the kind of person for whom you’re looking. It’s okay to not be boring. Tell a story rather than bullet out skills you need.
  3. But be honest – show your warts. You’re not the perfect manager. Nor is the job or company perfect. Know the downsides. Describe them in moderately gory detail. It not only sets expectations but it also allows people to opt out of applying, saving you time and potentially the brain damage of a really bad hire.
  4. Can the jargon. Every company has their own vernacular. Focus on the output and the rationale for doing the work rather than what the work is called.
  5. Help them help you. What does success look like? Where is the bar and what needs to happen to clear it? Most people don’t set out looking for an 18-month gig, it just works out that way because expectations weren’t set and they got pissed off. Clearly communicate the success metrics.
  6. Paint the winning scenario. If they succeed wildly, what will they get? Paint the best-case scenario – truthfully. Everyone expects to win, so start the conversation there. It also helps to align motivations with the real rewards. If I’m motivated by more responsibility then an employee of the month plaque just won’t cut it. I want to know that ahead of time.
  7. Your product is your environment, not your product. Enough already of the two-paragraph description of how you’re revolutionizing XYZ market. Everyone knows that’s all fluff. Don’t waste the space. Instead focus on what the candidate really cares about – the environment in which they’ll spend 8-12 hours every day.
  8. Don’t copy a job description from a Google search. You spend a lot of time trying to differentiate your products so why start trying to be the same now?
  9. Show don’t tell. We’ve covered this previously, but the idea is to convey your company’s culture and the skills you require via the posting rather a simple snoozefest of a list. Need someone detail oriented? Make a few ‘mistakes’ in the posting and somewhere convey that the right candidate will identify them in a cover letter.
  10. Describe a job to which you’d want to apply. If you had to get rehired for your current job what would make you want to apply? If you read what you just wrote would you be excited to apply?
  11. Establish hoops. While most of this is focused on the candidate, you’re the one hiring. Don’t be afraid to put candidates through their paces. This is more a marriage than a one-night stand. Have clear hurdles in place that will screen out people who don’t fit your culture or way of doing things. Assessments are gaining traction. Short job simulations are well. If you scare someone off, so be it. The cost of a bad hire is not worth the extra couple of applicants.
  12. (If you haven’t already done so…) Design the position for the candidate you want. Before even posting a job make sure that you know what you need out of the role. Want an ambitious self-starter? Make sure there is a career track in place beyond the role for which you’re hiring.

In sum, focus more on how well one fits you and your environment than on the skills they bring. Obviously, you need a baseline of skills but you’re not going to hire a dummy.  Anyone short-listed should have the know how and what they don’t know you can teach them. But you’ll never be able to change someone’s personality.

So don’t get so blinded by one’s skills that you ignore the red flags. You won’t be ignoring them in six-months.

Posted by brentdaily on March 16, 2010 | Add a comment | Hiring

Chemistry Matters

photo by sflovestory

photo by sflovestory

We’ve written a lot about why we think chemistry matters.  RoundPegg, after all, is all about finding people who will fit on your team without creating a cloud of chaos around them.  The better people fit into the team, the more energy they can spend driving the team forward instead of playing politics.

Kevin Millar, former Boston Red Sox, was recently signed by the Chicago Cubs.  While he plays a position at which the Cubs need a backup, the odds of him making the big league team are incredibly slim.  He’s fourth on the depth chart where only two will play with the big club.  Plus, he’s advancing in his career and hasn’t hit much in the past few years.   He was signed strictly to set the team’s mood in the clubhouse over the six-week stretch of spring training.

Millar’s take: chemistry matters.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Is team chemistry overrated?’ Well, you tell me. You’re with 25 guys more than your family from basically end of February to October. That’s not overrated. You try to bring a team and a group together. When you get everyone pulling on the same rope, it’s exciting.”

Last year, the Cubbies signed notorious clubhouse cancer Milton Bradley and paid the price.  He’s the epitome of how companies often hire.  An ‘A’ player by all statistical measurements, but little mind was paid to whether he’d fit in with the rest of the guys in the clubhouse.  While impossible to attribute Bradley’s antics to the Cubs 14-game decline from 2007 to 2008, it’s obvious the front office has gotten the message and is determined not to repeat that mistake.  Clearly, they lay some of the blame on a chemistry experiment gone bad.

Baseball is a unique sport where every play is a series of one on one battles.  Between the lines, I’d go so far to argue that chemistry matters less in baseball than in other sports.  Or your company.  But as Millar points out, you live with these guys.  If you don’t like being around them it’s going to be harder to bring your best every day.

The Cubs are willing to spend potentially up to a million dollars to set the right mood in the clubhouse.  Meanwhile, your company is probably more dependent upon teamwork than any baseball team.  How much time, effort and money are spent aligning your culture, your team and getting the most out of your employees?

Posted by brentdaily on February 16, 2010 | Add a comment | Culture, Motivation, Sports Metaphors, Values, teamwork

Job Satisfaction: An Alternative Approach

photo by orphanjones

photo by orphanjones

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame brings us some insight into how he would improve employee satisfaction.

I’ve been meaning to post this for some time so you may have already encountered it.  Regardless, it’s worthy of a chuckle as you coast into the holidays and think about how you’ll get everyone to walk back through the door come January 4th.

He concludes his post with the following advice:

“…the best way to make your employees feel a false sense of job satisfaction is to somehow convince them that there are much better jobs elsewhere. For example, you could subscribe all employees to entrepreneur magazines that are full of stories about people who left their unsatisfying jobs to become zillionaires. If you instill the false belief that better careers are obtainable, cognitive dissonance will cause the employees that have high self-esteem to believe they must enjoy their current jobs.”

Best of luck in 2010!

Posted by brentdaily on December 16, 2009 | Add a comment | Inspiration, Motivation