I am always impressed how hard it is to suss out how an individual will fit into our culture. At Lighthouse we believe that cultural fit -- how someone will fit into our style, pace and approach-- is the most significant key to hiring the right person. As a shared time management company, our team has to work across many different clients; quickly and seamlessly. It requires constant motion, thoughtful but efficient decision making and an adaptive approach to one's day. Although the person's technical skills are important, for us, more importantly, is trying to decipher how they will (or won't) fit into our culture.
So how do we test some one's cultural fit? In my experience, the most successful approach I've used comes from: Interviewing and Selecting High Performers: Every Manager's Guide to Effective Interviewing Techniques. This concise guide suggests consistent questioning using real scenarios and comparing the characteristics of your high performers to the canidates's performance traits.
Finding out how someone reacts to a particular, known quirk in your office space casts a real light on how someone will react once (if) they get there. We draw our questions from real office situations we know the canidates will face. We probe their answers, trying to understand their approach to the problem and their attitude towards the problem.
The second test, identifying traits that are already proven in your office setting and measuring those against the candidates' traits, is a clarifying process. The premise is that high performers help define the office culture and therefore, their traits can be described and compared to the canidates' traits. It is an illuminating process because it helps us understand our office culture and creates a structured interview approach for finding the right fit.
Regardless of the approach, hiring is never an easy process. And it today's world, every investment mattters.
We'll let you know how we did this time around.
-Mark
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