Recruiting for your corporate culture - 07/2001

Clashes over working style and company culture force many highly qualified staff to quit their jobs, but few people pay serious attention to these issues when recruiting. Employers tend to focus on qualifications, while employees tailor CVs to specific posts without worrying about whether they will fit in with the company culture.

By relying on qualifications and experience, many employers fail to find or retain the best candidates. This is because qualifications alone will not enable a candidate to achieve their full potential if the company is out of step with their own career expectations and way of working.

The key to successful recruitment lies in matching up candidates with environments and opportunities in which they will naturally thrive. Clearly, candidates need a certain level of ability but finding someone with the right attitudes and soft skills, such as leadership, can yield better results than simply relying on past experience. To achieve this, managers need detailed information on a candidateís operational style and career motivation, as well as their skills and experience. Managers also need a greater awareness of how they and others in their company work.

For years, assessments and psychometric analysis have provided insights into this valuable information but usually these are carried out towards the end of the recruitment process. Today, the Internet allows this information to be cost-effectively gathered much earlier and in an unbiased format. At Futurestep, as candidates register, we question them on three key areas - decision making, communication and career motivation. The answers provide a great insight into personalities, leadership style, the way candidates will interact with others and how they like to work.

Career motivation is a particularly important issue because it enables a recruiter to understand exactly what candidates value in a job. Many people assume that salary and increased responsibility are the main reasons for a move, but factors such as work/life balance and educational opportunities may be more important to some people and will undoubtedly influence their attitude to work.

Details on career motivation can be used to predict what will influence a candidateís decision at job offer stage. They can be invaluable further down the line too when expanding the applicantís career path and considering future options.

The feedback given to managers on their own style of working enables them to approach day-to-day situations differently and improve their overall effectiveness in managing and motivating their staff.

From the candidateís point of view, the insights they receive into the companyís ethos and attitudes help them to decide whether they are making the right move. They also enable them to evaluate their own approach to work, weigh up the aspects that are most important to them and find employers who value their views and aspirations.

People tend to feel more comfortable in organisations that are in tune with their own expectations of career development and opportunities. By synchronising the profiles of the candidate and company, recruiters can improve staff retention, as well as performance.

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