Culture fit of a candidate
According to employment services firm Lee Hecht Harrison, the biggest challenge hiring managers face today is ensuring that the candidate and employer make a good culture fit. Demonstrating the importance of sourcing and finding candidates who not only match the relevant skills and experience required for a specific job role but also fit culturally within the potential role. To ensure the best cultural fit professionally and personally, recruiters and hiring managers must interact with potential candidates to decide whether they will make a good fit. This responsibility is made by human judgement and although technology has the capability to simplify different stages of the hiring process – determining the cultural fit requires human input and evaluation. In order for potential candidates’ characteristics and personality traits to be considered.
What are the benefits?
A candidate who fits well into the company culture is a candidate whose work style, personality and values align with the potential employers. These are the ingredients to make a successful hire for both candidate and employer and is something hiring managers to strive for. This is because the outcome is more likely to result in a happier candidate, who enjoys their job role and workplace. Which furthermore can lead to longer employee retention rates and a potentially more productive workforce. Lots of different candidates can have the desired skill set and experience necessary for any given role but what really makes the ultimate hiring decision is which candidate is most likely to fit well into their potential new role.
Unmatched fit
Choosing to ignore the fit between company culture and candidate can be detrimental. Candidates who are a bad fit (ie different work ethics and work styles) will be reluctant to stay within the role they feel isn’t right for them. Causing them to feel either unhappy within the workplace or unable to work to the best of their ability. Emphasising the importance of a recruiter investing time prior to placing the candidate into understanding their needs and personality traits. In the long term, investing in the culture fit can ultimately save time and money wasted on making bad hiring decisions.
However, determining the cultural fit may not always be a number one priority for some recruiters where time restraints mean interacting and getting to know potential candidates and their work style/values isn’t always possible.
The advantage of hiring technology
As time is a precious commodity for the recruiter and hiring professional, it is important their human input and ability to assess the culture fit is utilised. This means that using time-saving techniques in other areas of their role such as candidate screening, means they can refocus their time back into making better hiring decisions, based on human judgement. By automating these processes it allows the recruiter to put more attention into the communicational side of their profession such as meeting and getting to know potential candidates. Through this method, the recruiter can ensure the candidate is the right cultural fit for any given role.
Technology can take away the burden of manual time-consuming tasks which can then be invested into determining the best culture fit – which in turn helps make great hires!
