Experience, skills, and education are all important considerations for new hires. But there’s another factor that is just as important but is sometimes overlooked—culture fit. Culture fit is more than just whether or not a candidate will get along with the current team members; it also entails a candidate’s likelihood to thrive in your work environment and embody your organization’s values and vision. Only then can you be sure a candidate is truly right for the job. Here are some ways to ensure cultural fit during your next interview.
- Have candidates take an assessment first. This gives you concrete metrics to judge your candidates by determining if they have the right culture fit.
- Give applicants the opportunity to lead the session. With the freedom to guide conversation, desirable personalities will shine, while those that don’t fit will clearly stand out.
- Remember you’re hiring an employee, not a best friend. Sometimes a candidate, although extremely likeable personality-wise, may not have the right potential for cultural fit, or even job fit. Personality may be important, but qualification and competence is more important.
- Ask questions that give useful insight during an interview. Here are some good questions you can ask:
- Under what conditions do you do your very best work?
- Can you describe a work environment that you would feel really uncomfortable in?
- Who would you consider the ultimate co-worker from any movie, TV show, or book?
- What’s a company (other than this one) that you admire, and why?
Getting to know your candidates’ capabilities and qualifications with assessments, letting them express themselves to you, keeping the needs of the job in mind, and asking the right questions are ideal ways to figure out if the candidate you are interviewing has adequate cultural fit for your organization.
For more tips on interview tactics, visit Talexes’ Conducting Interviews page today!
