Culture Fit - A must in the Executive Search Process
“The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; It’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they are valued.” -Ken Robinson This is the power of work culture in making or braking the company. But a good work culture is not enough. An employee culture fit is also very important as a person only remains happy where he belongs and a happy employee is a loyal employee who would not think of leaving his company ever. “Hire Character. Train Skill.” -Peter Schutz As one of the Top Executive Search Agency in Germany, we pay special attention in studying the work culture of a company by talking to the upper and lower ranks observing it from both
internally and externally. This helps in finding the right kind of employees and managers that would become assets of the company rather than liabilities. The importance of employee culture fit can be better explained by ASA (Attraction, Selection and Attrition) model. This model says that 1. Individuals are attracted to the companies who share similar values, interests, personality and other attributes. 2. Companies are likely to hire people who possess skill, knowledge and abilities as their current employees. 3. In this process, if a person does not fit in well, he is likely to leave the company very soon and therefore turnover rates would be high. Researches have shown that Highly engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their companies than their disengaged counterparts. Highly engaged employee means more work which in turn means more revenue.
In order to ensure that the candidate you are hiring would fit in well, following steps can be taken: 1. Run a background search on every applicant for the job. You have the company’s value system in place, try to find the suitable matches on the basis of previous jobs of the applicant. This could be a great screening exercise which would save you the hassle of meeting of all these applicant who you are sure won’t fit. 2. Ask different questions to the candidates such as “Where you see yourself in 5 years?” “How will you cope up if you are made a part of the team”, “In what time you expect yourself to get promoted?” , “What was the culture of your previous company and did you like it?” and the best for the last “Do you have any questions for us?”. This last question would help the candidate open up and would give you the idea of his expectations from the company. The best way to understand if he would fit in or not. 3. Next is training. Now you have hired a candidate closest to what you wanted. To mould him well in your company’s frame, training comes into play. Give an open environment of learning to the new employees. Make them acquainted with company’s value system and hence help them fit in properly. Employee culture fit not only benefits the company but the employees and all those related to him as happiness is what is the end goal of everyone. No one wants a nagging husband coming home everyday and crying over the fact that how much he hates his company.