By Ashley Lipman
Content Marketing Specialist
Business owners work hard to create and cultivate company culture. However, the culture of a company does not come from upper management decree. If you want to cultivate company culture, you should start by hiring the right employees. Each new employee that you bring in has a role to play in eroding or sustaining the culture.
Make sure that you hire employees who can demonstrate the company values and reinforce its vision and mission. Nowadays, most employees are looking for positions that line up with their values, making it easier to find the right people to hire. Here are some common mistakes that you need to avoid when hiring:
Not Translating Values into Behaviors
You need to spend some time looking at your company values to determine how you can translate them into behavior. For example, if you are looking for employees who can work well in teams, this might mean that they have to acknowledge the contribution of others to their success or stay behind after hours to help their coworkers. You need to write down value-based behavior to help your recruiting team to find the best people for the job.
To create a culture that is more effective, you should look for values that emphasize personal development, responsibility, inclusion, and wellbeing. You need to communicate value-based behaviors to your recruiting team. You should also spend time training them on the company culture so that they can understand the actions and behaviors to look for in potential employees.
Not Doing Background Checks
Even if you think that you have the perfect candidates for a certain job position, you should not rush to hire them. Make sure that you conduct a follow-up background search to find out their work history, education, and behavior at their previous jobs.
Doing so is necessary for all company sizes because no matter how small your business is, you need to hire an employee with a clean background.
Not Communicating Core Values to Candidates
You need to visit the career page of your company and social media platforms frequently to communicate corporate values, mission, and culture to potential candidates. Instead of writing down the corporate values that you are looking for, you should also share stories that show these values in action. For example, you can post some short interviews where current employees talk about how family friendly the workplace is.
Not Using Behavior-based Interviews
Instead of asking the interviewees about their values, you should use behavior-based questions to figure out how they dealt with specific situations in the past. When the applicants share specific examples, the interviewers can use the information to establish whether they have a history of following the core values of your company. The basis of this type of interview is that past behavior has a bearing on future behavior.
You should ask specific questions such ‘can you share about the time you had to build a quick rapport with others?’ With such questions, it would be hard for the interviewee to make something up on the spot.
Not Judging on Potential
If you have two applicants with different levels of experience, it is only natural to want to hire the one with more experience. For instance, if you have an applicant with 3 years of experience and another one with 7 years, they will both expect the same salary. However, you need to analyze them closely before making your choice.
Instead of looking at the experience only, you should also consider the candidate’s willingness to learn. You could ask both applicants to send a sample invoice to your clients then investigate their work. If one of the candidates decides to send a graphic design invoice and the other one sends a plain invoice, you should choose the creative candidate.
Conclusion
When you hire people, who can make a positive contribution to the culture of your company, you will be able to foster a great working environment. Your employees are your brand ambassadors and this means that they will boost your brand and affect future hiring. If you fail to place emphasis on company culture during hiring, you might end up damaging your brand, bottom line, as well as the efficiency of your company.