Culture vs time: hiring the right people, fast.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” - Peter Drucker

Getting your operations plan right can be the difference between growing a successful business, and constantly putting out fires. In this article, I look at just one aspect of operations – recruitment – and dive into the challenges of hiring a person who will be the right culture fit after just one meeting. 

I can’t even tell you how much of an advocate I am for building, properly maintaining and nurturing culture within a business.

To me, and to many who have been in or studied successful, thriving businesses, culture is an absolute make or break. 

You get it right and you can overcome most obstacles. 

You get it wrong and your seemingly unified team falls apart and runs in opposite directions at the first sign of a battle… 

And when starting up or scaling a business, battles come regularly.

As far as I’m concerned, the quote, "culture eats strategy for breakfast" should be written on every wall in every business. Because that is it — that is the mindset that should drive every leader and every team. 

Culture is what makes your team go that extra mile, make people want to come to work (no more Sunday scaries!), work late to make a deadline and pitch in to help a teammate in need.

Don’t get me wrong, strategy is important but for most founders and leaders, strategy has been evangelised as being ‘everything’. Despite this, without the right people, motivated and hungry, joined together by one common vision, strategy is just words on paper that will never be implemented. 

Building culture starts from day one, from the first time a business’s founders sit around a table together. It continues to grow and evolve with every recruit who is invited to become part of the team. It takes work, it takes focus and attention to get the culture right — it also takes time.  

So, how do you ensure you are bringing the right people into your business — people who will contribute to, strengthen and seamlessly fit your culture  — when time is the one thing you don’t have?

The problem: a resume and one hour is never enough!

For as long as most people remember, a resume has been a key part of getting a job. You fill out your previous work experience, your educational qualifications and list a few references. 

Other than a cover letter, that’s basically it. That’s all a potential employer has to work from when selecting who they would like to interview.

When a business has built or is working to build a very particular culture, this lack of information is problematic.

As employers, we know what the person has supposedly done and what they have achieved, but we know nothing about the person themself. 

So we shortlist based almost purely on a skill fit, usually with a helping of subconscious bias and unspoken excitement if they’ve worked for good brands.

Then we rely on interviews — a measly one hour with a person to make an initial assessment about whether they have what we need to keep creating a winning culture. 

Have you ever met someone and straight away had a connection with them, felt like you know them? 

It’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s a great feeling… and it’s also a real rarity.

The same applies in business as in our personal lives — it’s rare to be able to judge character or culture-fit from just an hour of controlled conversation.

And while yes, you will have the entire probation period to find out if your split-second assessment was the right one, we all know a person can do tremendous damage and introduce irreparable toxicity in just one week, let alone a couple of months. 

So the dilemma arises: how do we successfully hire for culture-fit in the shortest time period possible?

The solution: Putting culture-fit assessment on fast-forward

If you’ve ever been for a job in a big company, chances are you’ve done an aptitude test, or something to that effect. You may have even done a simple skills-based test — written something, analysed something, created something. 

Essentially, the company wants to make the most informed decision possible and double-check your claimed abilities. To do so, they put you through the skills gauntlet.

What few companies do, however, is implement any processes that help minimise the time it takes them to make the right culture-fit selections.

I’m known for making good decisions regarding new employees — it’s a point of pride for me. I read people well, I’m very values-driven and I have a strong gut-feel for people who live and work by the same values I do, which happily, are the same values that underpin our business. 

But gut-feeling isn’t enough — especially because it just isn’t something everyone can trust. How do you get the choice right, to pinpoint a culture-fit candidate without burning months of time?

One tool you can start with is behavioural-based questions during interviews. Again, often used in interviews to assess skills fit, they can actually be used effectively to better understand the values and behaviour of a candidate.

By putting questions to them that ask them to determine their response to a scenario in a split-second, you are actually mirroring real life, and taking away the opportunity to think and mould answers for the interview (which can’t be kept up forever in reality).

The best way to formulate these questions is based on a vital resource you should already have in your kit — your values. Take each one, form a question around it and see how your candidate stacks up. You can also survey your other team members for their answers beforehand to measure consistency in your culture and set a baseline. 

Another great way to test for culture-fit is to give yourself a bit more time. Invite them to spend an hour or two with your team. It also removes some of the risk for them, and helps them better cement their chances — they also get an opportunity to sample the culture before accepting the role!

If you have a small team, bring the candidate in to sit and catch up with each team member – they can each find out what the other does and sample personalities, and the candidate can get a feel for the workspace. 

When they leave, consult your team. Different people will pick up on different things, and they are, after all, the safekeepers of your culture. 

Beyond these two quite simple strategies, there are established tools that allow you test for culture-fit, in a similar way you test for aptitude. While some of these are spot on, they are also a little hit and miss, so I would always suggest trying the more human methods above, as you and your people are one of the best tests for who is going to fit. 

One final, yet very important note to make, is that diversity is incredibly important in businesses, and while our own subconscious bias or lack of understanding can cause us to lean towards people who might look like us or act within the lines of what has for far too long been considered ‘normal’, that bias can let us down.

Bringing people in from different experiences and backgrounds can deliver a new take on things, and new ideas and can massively increase creativity and problem-solving in your team. Be aware of your own biases and make sure you consider them very consciously when assessing recruits.

People who are neurodiverse may also be a fantastic addition to your team — but situations like interviews may feel overwhelming for them and you won’t get to see them at their best, or behaving in a way that is reflective of how they usually behave. Again, keep this in mind, there are some excellent resources that can help you navigate the situation so you get the best person for the job, skills and culture-fit, regardless of their situation.

Create a strong foundation

In reality, the most critical part of your business foundation is your team — the people and the culture they organically create, and the culture you cultivate through your recruitment and other decisions. 

For years, we have had the idea of recruiting for culture-fit reinforced and re-emphasised, but few solutions provided for how we get it right when we are working against the clock. 

The bottom line is, though we are all competing for great talent and certainly that is in short supply right now, both you and your leading candidates will benefit from taking the extra steps to collect more information and make the right decision, the first time.