Culture Interviews

There has been a large rise over the last decade of companies leveraging Culture interviews as part of their hiring process. The main aim of these is fundamentally to look at how the candidate aligns to the culture of the company. Are these interviews creating more complications for the hiring process which then impacts the outcome.

In this article I will go through the different areas of culture interviews and consider one area that companies can start to look at a little more in Values interviews.

What is a culture interview?

It is worth starting off and looking at what a culture interview is a separate interview that assess the candidate on their vision, mission and beliefs. The interview is to look at how the candidate aligns their beliefs to the companies culture. The theory behind running these interviews is that teams and companies with individuals that have better alignment to the culture of the company yields better performance overall and leads to higher retention. The benefits are very well known but we can often overlook some of the other impacts this has on hiring.

Let’s look at the different forms of culture interviews that have come up over the years.

Culture Fit

Companies and hiring teams had historically focussed on culture fit within these stand alone culture interviews. The terminology and criteria was whether the candidate would fit within the companies culture and be able to succeed within the role.

Typically interviewers would be assessing candidates on core aspects of culture within the current company. This would normally be based on the overall companies values. A key challenge is ensuring that the questions that have been developed are in alignment with assessing the candidate in the right way.

One of the biggest draw backs with culture fit is oftentimes, even more so with poorly trained interviewers, will result in a significant amount unconscious biases. These will often turn into ‘do I like this person’ more than actually assessing candidates against the culture of the company.

Recently culture fit interviews are loosing ground on being used but often some companies are still using these.

Culture Add

Culture fit interviews are moving and shifting to more on culture add vs culture fit. The difference here is how does the candidate add the existing culture through their own values, beliefs and mission. There should be greater clarity in the companies culture and values. The key aspect is ensuring that the interview questions built are aligned to get the full information that you need to have that picture of the candidate.

The core focus of the interview should be on the candidate and their values and beliefs. The interview questions that are selected should focus on the companies values as well as core themes of the organisations culture. By understanding the candidate and how they can add to the current culture of the company.

What I like about culture add interviews is that it does allow greater opportunities for diverse candidates to get hired. With the core reason being moving from culture fit (are they like me) to can they add to the existing culture (what do they bring that helps the team move forward).

If hiring teams aren’t well trained similar to culture fit interviews can go wrong as biases come through significantly more. If the interviewers aren’t well trained in how to run a culture interviews, you are likely impacting the overall quality of hire.

Running effective culture interviews

In order to use culture interviews effectively you need to ensure that the interview group of culture interviewers are your best interviewers and know how to assess and provide valuable insights with their feedback on the candidates.

This role shouldn’t be allocated to any and available interviewer. Their role should focus on:

• Ensure the hiring bar for candidates vs the culture remains high

• Ensure that the candidate will succeed in the culture

• Challenge the interview team; not being fearful to ask the difficult questions

This raises the question, is there a different or better way to look at assessing or running these interviews?

I read an article on Values Based Hiring, whilst the overall premise of the article is looking at values within the hiring process overall, it got me thinking and something I have previously rolled out in a couple of start-ups is looking at the companies values and interviewing candidates against these.

Instead of looking at culture interview maybe you should be looking at values interview. Within the values interview you would:

• Assessing candidates against the companies values

• Review against their values vs companies values

• Understand how their beliefs and behaviours align against the values

• Raise the bar of hiring based on the company values

By looking at Values Based Hiring over culture interview there is some great benefits, you are focussing on what the company values as important (its values), and it is significantly easier for candidates and interview teams to be prepared and understand the overall synergies more effectively.

You will also be able to create more effective interview questions that enable you to understand the candidates in more detail and assess their candidacy for the company better. By leveraging values based hiring you will be able to align your entire recruiting philosophy through the company values from careers website, job adverts, hiring and onboarding journey.

By looking at values based hiring you can really improve your ability to hire well.

Want to discuss this further then let’s connect.

Enjoyed this content? Why not check out some of my other content:

• Interviewer Training Course: Looking to up skill your interview team or companies ability to hire better? Then you should come and look at my interviewer training.

• Need some content for interviewing including question banks check out my content here

• Need Interview Scorecards or a playbook for interviewing download these here

• Hiring SDRs and not sure where to advertise, post your roles here