One of the essential goals of talent management is to attract and retain high quality candidates who will fit into and contribute to your company culture. Corporate culture can be an elusive concept, but all businesses have a culture that defines aspects of both how they do business and how their employees interact with one another and with the company as a whole.

Figuring Out Your Corporate Culture

If you are unsure how to define your company’s culture, it is worthwhile to take the time to figure out exactly how you come across to your employees and others outside the company. Ask around and see what insights your employees and industry colleagues have, and give it some thought yourself.  What does your company value? How does that play out in everyday interactions?

Once you have a handle on your corporate culture, you can determine whether you want to try to adjust your culture in any way to better reflect your stated values or develop your culture to advance your business. Your future hires can be part of any shift as you consciously decide how to guide the company into greater consistency of culture.

Corporate Culture and Hiring

Culture needs to be an integral part of any talent management strategy. How employees view the company and its culture will have a great deal to do with their motivation and how they relate to other employees.

Corporate culture should be introduced as early on in the hiring process as possible; mentioning it in the job description would be ideal. As the hiring process unfolds, culture can be communicated in several ways.

Background research on candidates can reveal whether they are likely to fit into certain aspects of the corporate culture. For instance, you might be looking for candidates that support the causes your company supports, or that have a fitness/healthy living mindset, or a commitment to work-life balance. Whatever causes and emphases define the corporate culture, candidates who already have a passion or commitment to those causes are more likely to be a fit with the company.

Interview questions can be geared toward seeing whether a candidate will fit into the culture. The hiring team can ask whether candidates have heard of particular causes, what their outside interests are, and how they handle situations involving communication and teamwork to get a sense for whether they might fit into the existing culture or help to mold the future culture in desirable ways.

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Sharing a meal or attending a social gathering together during the interview process may also help the hiring team determine cultural fit. Of course, candidates will usually be on their best behavior at this stage, but things will often slip through in a social setting that can give added insight.

Thrive TRM allows hiring teams to share insights and information about candidates that can be beneficial when evaluating cultural fit. Notes and information can be synced from other software tools and shared with the entire team to help evaluate candidates, which can lead to faster hiring without sacrificing accuracy. Schedule a demo and ramp up your talent management strategy today.

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