Hiring For Culture Fit

Written by Gregg Patberg Saturday, January 23, 2010

Is hiring for culture fit really that important? In a word … yes! Many of the top companies are looking to augment their interviewing and hiring processes with better fit selection techniques. According to a DDI study, 63% of employees hired with the wrong culture fit fail, compared to 26% that are hired with a better fit.

Traditionally organizations have focused on identifying and selecting people based on their skills and experience. However, while skills and experience continue to be important, research and practice increasingly point to ‘motivational fit’ as the key differentiator in the selection process. 

Improved screening for motivational fit brings obvious rewards. For instance:

• Improved productivity
• Improved retention
• Increased ROI of human capital
• Less training

While assessing for culture fit during the recruitment process is consistently identified as critical, many companies are not systematically assessing for fit and employing methods that are likely to deliver the best outcome.

Since too often companies fail to consider motivational fit and in particular organizational fit. The outcome of this lack of focus is illustrated in the accompanying graph. Lack of such focus will cause companies:

• Loss of customers
• Increased staffing costs
• Lower moral
• Loss of revenue

Today, hiring managers are being asked to do more and more as human resources departments are being outsourced. So what can a manager do to ensure better results?

 

• Assess their own company, department, and personal culture.
• Look at best performers, to determine the talents and behaviors required for success in job.
  
• Spend less time in the interview assessing skills and experience, and more time on fit.
• Double check findings with thorough reference checks.

Assessing culture/motivational fit can be a daunting challenge but with a little training and practice most hiring managers can become effective at assessing for the right things.

For more information about the services provided by HiringForFit.com, please give us a call at 1-888-462-8222 or CLICK HERE to send an email and we will call you.