Recruitment – Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

I always suggest starting with what you know – your business.

If you need to recruit someone, you need to know that they’re going to fit in with the culture of your business. But how do you know what this is?

Businesses have many different cultures, there are buzz words such as high performing, dynamic and vibrant but it always comes down to a bit more than that, and recruiting for that right ‘fit’.

Know what you need

Julian has started his own business developing Mobile Apps using Ruby on Rails programming.

He’s done well so far and has been working hard on developing the business.

He’s done a lot of the groundwork on business development himself and has managed to get a contract to develop a new app for a music festival in 4 months time

Knowing his current commitments, and that the client is quite demanding and also unsure of their requirements Julian knows he needs to bring someone on board to help deliver the app on time for the company.

Making the decision

But how does Julian know who will work best when the pressure is on?

Here the situation is fairly easy to understand. Julian knows he needs someone that has a good work ethic and the technical skills to come in and hit the ground running.

In this example, Julian is less likely to consider the character and long-term fit as he needs to get the job done now.

If Julian were thinking about getting someone in for the longer term, he would be more likely to consider how the potential employee would be a good culture fit for his company

Or, if you’re a little bit further on into business:

Rob and Jane are franchisees in a bakery chain. They have one bakery already and, wanting to expand, have purchased another they intend to set up and operate.

They’re happy with the manager of the current business and will move her over to the new franchise to lead the new team.

That means they’re looking for someone to fill her big shoes in the role she’s currently in.

Most of the staff work part-time, after school/university hours, they enjoy working together, get along well and work hard to finish tasks, clean up etc within the timelines required.

How do Rob and Jane word their job advertisement to attract the right applicants?

Essentially, what Julian, Rob and Jane need to do is analyse the business culture they have and communicate that to their target market.

What is it that characterises the workplace? Is it each man for themselves or is there a culture of teamwork and support? Phrases like ‘action oriented’ or ‘supportive team environment’ are good ways to express these differences.

What are the interactions like? Is a casual conversation at the start of a shift the norm? A quick chat about the footy acceptable or is the team spirit built on interactions that happen outside of business hours?
How does the business deal with conflicts or disagreements? – Do you take an issue up straight away with the person involved or do you take it to their manager straight away?
Is there a sense of openness in conversation? – Do you share about your weekend activities easily and openly or do employees only interact with each other when they need to talk about work?

By pakorn, published on 02 December 2013

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions you’ll start to get an idea of the best person to fit your team culturally.

Further down the track, you’ll also need to make sure you use behavioural interview techniques to see how those who’ve applied for the job will actually stack up when things get a bit stressful in the workplace. And if it does, developing resilience is really important – and is a massive focus in our team building workshops.