When you’re hiring employees, the first thing that you’ll consider is their qualifications and experience. It’s important that they actually have the necessary skills to do the job effectively, but that’s not the only thing that you need to think about. A person’s productivity depends partly on their relevant skills but it also depends on how well they fit into the work environment. If an employee doesn’t enjoy working at the company and they don’t feel comfortable around the office, they won’t work that effectively, so you need to consider this during the hiring process.
The company culture is one of the most important things to think about here, but a lot of business owners forget that when they’re comparing candidates. Your company culture refers to the values and goals that the company has, the work environment, and the relationships that your employees have to one another and to you. If your company is a very relaxed work environment and your employees work independently to their own schedules, a candidate who prefers a strict, regimented work environment, for example, isn’t going to get on very well. If you hire people that don’t fit the company culture, they will either leave shortly which is never a good thing for you or they’ll stay with the company but they won’t work very effectively, which is also bad for you because you’re wasting money on an employee that doesn’t bring much to the table. That’s why it’s vital that you work out whether a candidate fits the company culture before you hire them. These are some of the best ways to do that.
Define Your Culture
The first step is to define your culture and a lot of new businesses struggle with this because they’re still growing and changing all of the time so it isn’t always clear exactly what their company is all about yet. Start by thinking about your goals for the business and that will give you a better idea of what your core values are. What drives your business? What do you hope to achieve? You might be focused solely on making a profit or maybe you’re more concerned with building long lasting relationships with customers and offering them excellent service. By thinking about your goals, you’ll start to understand a bit more about what your culture is. You should also talk to your employees and ask what it is about the company that they like the most and what they feel drives them when they’re at work. Your aim should be to come up with a few sentences that capture the core culture of your company. Once you can do this, you will find it a lot easier to decide whether somebody fits or not.
Perform Background Checks
Background checks are an important part of the hiring process because you need to know whether a person can legally work in this country and whether they have a criminal past. However, they can also be a good way to get a bit of an insight into their work history and their attitude toward work. For example, if you’re a very close knit team and you have a strong focus on nurturing and developing employees over long periods, you don’t want somebody that switches jobs regularly instead of looking to get promoted within. There are some great companies that do quick background checks which give you a lot of information on candidates, click here for more information on how to do it. You should always do this early on in the process so you know whether they’re likely to be a good fit or not and you don’t waste time with candidates that aren’t right for the company.
Include Culture In The Job Advert
The hiring process is a lot easier if you write a job advert that attracts the right people in the first place, otherwise, you have to spend a long time going through applications and getting rid of all of the candidates that aren’t right for your company at all. If you outline the company culture in the job advert, you’ll get more candidates that are a good fit for you. For example, if you’re a relaxed company that lets employees work to their own schedules and wants people that will take the initiative to work out the best way to do things for themselves, you need to say that. Equally, if you’re a very traditional company that has a clear way of doing things, you need to outline what that is. Making your company culture a clear feature of the job advert is one of the best ways to speed up the hiring process and ensure that all of the applicants are the right kind of people for your business.
Include Culture Questions At Interview
When it comes to interviewing and making your final decision, it’s important that you don’t just focus on their job relevant experience. That is important, of course, but you should take the opportunity to try to get to know them a bit more. Ask about their interests outside of work, whether they tend to socialize with colleagues, and how they prefer to work. Asking these sorts of questions will help you to understand a bit more about them outside of their skills and decide whether they fit the company culture or not.
Invite Them To A Staff Event
It’s difficult to know for sure whether somebody fits the company culture, even if you’ve done all of these things, but the best way to get a good idea of how they’ll fit in with the rest of your employees is to invite them to a team building event of some kind. If you give them the opportunity to meet the team and socialize with them outside of the workplace in a relaxed setting, you can see how they get along with everybody. You can also ask your employees what their impressions were and whether they think that person is a good fit because they might have a different perspective to you.
Even if a candidate has great experience, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the right person for the job. It’s important that you also think about whether they fit the company culture if you want to hire people that are going to be productive.