How to Hire Someone Into the Right Work Culture

Categories: Recruitment Advice, Trends and Learning

Work culture is so important for ensuring that an employee is placed into the right environment. It’s possible to have the perfect job on paper, but then in reality to have one that is a completely wrong fit for someone’s values. Work culture is often set by the senior management and those who work there, so it can be quite hard to know what you are walking into as an employee and the same can be said for recruiters.

Complexity

Just because somebody enjoys a ‘work hard, play hard’ environment, doesn’t mean that this is what your potential employee will enjoy in every high-powered work place they’re thrown into. For example, it’s possible to have a challenging work environment that holds very specific ethical values which will appeal to someone who wants a challenge but not one that is too reckless. Taxi driver recruitment, for instance, has a surprising variety in terms of company ethics and goals, which could be perfect for someone who wants diversity but also a company ethos behind it.

Push for the Interview

One of the biggest indicators of whether a company will have the right work culture is to see how the interview goes. It’s important not to push the interviewee into accepting the job offer if they have any niggling doubts. Ask them what they made of their interviewers and whether they have any concerns about their potential future role.

Do Your Research

It will not shine well on you as a recruiter if you put someone forward for an interview, only to find out that you had completely misjudged the company as a whole. Before you recommend any business for someone, do plenty of research beforehand. Chat in depth with the business owner, and ideally ask them questions about what the worklife balance is like in their company. Regular communication with the companies you work with also helps to set reasonable expectations from their end, too. The better the relationship with the business you’re working with, the more accurate a picture you can present to any employee.

Bring them in for a trial period

One way that you determine whether someone is suited for a particular job is to bring them in for a trial period. This could be a couple of days at the start or the end of the working week or it could be for an extended period of time, usually between 3 and 6 months. This is what is known as a probationary period. This gives both you, the employer, and the employee a chance to see if the job is suited to them, whether they like it, and how they get on with the work schedule. However, it is not just about how well they can do the job; it is also about whether they get on with the rest of the team that you already have. While they might have smashed the interview stage and claimed that they were a team player, bring them into an environment in which they have to showcase these skills, you could discover that they are not the right fit because they actually prefer to work by themselves as opposed to in a team. If your work requires teamwork, you will know that this will not work in the long term.

By the end of the trial period, if they are not suitable for the position, you can terminate the contract, but if you have found the perfect match, then you can ask them to sign a new permanent contract.

Process of Elimination

One of the easiest ways to find out what someone wants in a new job is to eliminate what they absolutely hated about their last job. Ask them why they want to leave and learn more about that particular work culture. Was it the people, the company ethos (or both) that made them want to move on? Finding out what they didn’t like is sometimes a much more practical way of discovering what kind of company will work for them. After all, you may have a prospective employee who is actually quite open to the idea of new and different work environments, so it’s better to go with a list of ‘must nots’ than ‘must haves.’

Any ethical recruiter will want to hire someone into a role that suits their core values. The values of a company are fundamental when considering how to make a potential employee happy. The only real way to match values together in this way is to do plenty of extensive research on both sides. Encouraging any new recruits to at least go for an interview will help to reduce ambiguity surrounding a new company.