It has been estimated that more than one-half of all new hires will fail within 2 years, and they will fail mostly because of bad chemistry. Corporate culture means a lot of things: It defines the way people treat each other, what people in the workplace can openly discuss and the kinds of behaviors that are rewarded and discouraged. Simply put, it is the answer to the question: "How do we do things around here?"
Perhaps you work for a company that encourages risk taking or where certain policies and procedures are more important to the company than they are to you. Perhaps all major decisions are made by consensus and where culture is heavily centered around team building. Each and every manager also helps put their own mark on an organization's culture, creating a complex environment of "mini-cultures." Many of us have experienced situations where we were able to work with one manager or department head, but not with another one within the same organization. It's no wonder that cultural fit plays such a key role in the success or failure of a hiring decision.
One of the best guides I have seen into probing for cultural fit comes from I.T. hiring expert Johanna Rothman, who presents four key questions that every hiring manager should ask. Let's examine each of them.
Question 1: Tell me about your greatest successes? What caused your success? Most interviewers stop with the first part of the question and fail to probe the reasons behind successful achievement. Those reasons will give you great clues as to the kind of culture and environment that works best for the particular candidate being questioned. Working in a highly supportive environment or in an environment that encourages risk taking are a couple of things you'll typically hear. These types of more in-depth responses will help you compare past working environments, where the candidate was successful, with your own working environment.
Question 2: Tell me about your greatest challenges, and what caused them? Same principle as question 1 except with this question candidates will talk about problems they encountered and how culture interfered with their ability to solve them.
Question 3: What type of environment do you need to work in to be most successful? Here, candidates reveal their needs for things such as work tools, privacy or processes in order to work successfully.
Question 4: What is important for you to have if we made you an offer? Offers are about much more than just money. Vacation, benefits, office location, computers, phones, etc. are also important. Some candidates place more importance on ongoing training than others and managers want to be sure they have the ability to hire and fire staff as needed.
I personally use these four questions routinely, and they will go a long way towards helping you better qualify candidates for cultural fit, and ultimately improve your ratio of successful hires.