5 smart tips to hire a culture-fit employee

The concept of hiring culture-fit candidates is an underestimated element in the search for the perfect employees. Many companies hire for skills, experiences, and the likes. While these other factors are essential to perform in a role, being culture-fit increases a new hire’s chances of becoming successful in a company.

Culture-fit hiring is all about finding employees who share the same values as the employer. Such employees understand the company’s mission better, fit in faster, and drive long-term business growth.

To help your company catch up with this trend, we have come up with 5 tips to hire a culture-fit employee. But before that, let's look at why hiring for culture has become the key priority in the recruitment processes of successful companies.

Why is it important to hire for culture?

Here are 5 reasons companies hire for culture:

• Reduce turnover rate: Employees who do not fit in with company culture are less likely to stay for the long term. They will feel uncomfortable with the status quo and find it difficult to collaborate with colleagues while the Culture-fit employees feel connected to the long-term objectives of a company and more committed to their job.
• Increase job satisfaction: Companies know that when an employee shares the same values as them, they fall in love with their job. A happy employee will go the extra mile to help the company achieve its goals. In contrast, employees who are not culturally fit for a company will derive no job satisfaction from working there.
• Build a winning team: Winning team is essential for business growth. To build a winning team, every member should be connected on the same level, have the same goal, and share the same values. Culture-fit employees are faster at becoming part of the team and contribute to team success.
• Become star performers: Given that culture-fit employees fit well into the organization, they are likely to be more confident in their work and strive to achieve more. As a result, there will be an increase in job performance, which will contribute to the overall growth of the company.

With the importance of culture-fit employees already established, how can we find employees whose values align to the company values?

How to hire culture-fit employees?

1. Define your company culture

Before deciding to hire culture-fit employees, your company must first determine its own culture. The culture a company adopts should be tailored toward its goals and employee welfare. Only the candidate whose personal values align with your company culture can integrate with your organization and contribute to its business objectives.

For example, if a company wants a team-oriented culture, it should look for candidates who enjoy collaboration. On the other hand, if a less interactive culture is preferred, hiring someone who performs best alone should be the recruitment aim.

2. Know the candidate’s history

For a candidate to make it to the recruitment stage, they must possess the minimum technical skills required to excel in that job. However, finding culture-fit employees goes beyond skills, experience, and qualifications. Hence, your company needs to know the history of the candidates during the interview.

Questions that will help you know about employees’ prior personal and work challenges should be asked. Knowing the type of challenges they faced and how they dealt with those challenges is also necessary to understand if such a candidate will adapt to your culture.

3. Know what the candidate wants

Next, your company needs to know the environment candidates want to work in. This will help you know if your own organization is ideal for the candidate. While many candidates have vague ideas about the type of environment they want, in-depth questions can help to clarify what they really want.

For instance, if a candidate says they want an open environment, they should be asked to describe what “open” means to them. If a candidate’s ideal environment is close to yours, then such a candidate will be a suitable fit for your company.

4. Use technology for recruitment

During recruitment process, there are a lot of manual tasks to be done. The HR team has to sort out and screen sizable numbers of CVs. They also have to fix several interview sessions with each candidate. These manual processes take a lot of effort, drawing the attention of the team from the actual goal - hiring the perfectly fit candidate.

By adopting the use of technology solutions, companies will automate or semi-automate most of these processes. Also, using technology to automate your HR recruitment process will allow everyone on the hiring team to collaborate effectively and achieve better results.

5. Onboard properly

Successful organizations know that hiring is not the last stage of recruitment - onboarding is. However, most companies do not know how to properly onboard their employees. Onboarding properly will give the new employee a feel of your company culture.

A proper onboarding process starts with preparing employees prior to their first day at work. This should be done by informing them (via a mobile app) of the tasks they are to complete before starting their first days to work. You can also make a video to make your employees feel welcomed and connected.

Lastly, an orientation session in day one would help set your new hires up to speed faster. This includes letting them know what the organization and team goals are and how the employee can contribute to achieving those goals.

Final Thoughts

“Hire for culture, train for skill”. Companies are finally recognizing the long-overlooked trend of hiring culture-fit candidates. Many now understand that having an employee that shares their core values and collective behavior is a gateway to low turnover and increased productivity. With these easy-to-remember steps, companies can find the ideal employee that fits perfectly with their organization.