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Culture Shift: The Ultimate Hiring Blunder
May 12, 2008
Hint: It has nothing to do with hiring candidates with the wrong qualifications or experience.
By Paul Levesque
The Good News: "We needed someone with solid technical computer skills in this department to sort out all our local network headaches. I was extremely lucky to find a whiz-kid who knows this stuff inside out. The guy’s technical savvy just blew every other job applicant out of the water."
The Bad News: "Turns out everybody in the department finds the guy too abrasive and cranky to deal with, so they continue to try and fix their problems themselves. Now I have as many computer problems as I did before, plus one more person on the payroll who basically does nothing all day."
It's the most costly and damaging hiring blunder of all—yet, sad to say, also the most common. It's the "temporary amnesia" that sets in during hiring interviews—when interviewers are so busy making sure each applicant has the right technical qualifications for the job, managers forget all about checking to see if any of the applicants also have the kind of personality or value system that will strengthen the organization's culture.
Hiring For Cultural Alignment
New people bring new ideas and new energy into a business. If their personal "magnetic north" lines up with the organization's own axis of cultural alignment, the culture is strengthened. If their magnetic field happens to have a different orientation, however, this has a weakening effect on the overall establishment. And once enough different fields pointing in enough different directions have been added to the mix, the original alignment can be cancelled out altogether.
This is how an organization deteriorates from one that originally "knew exactly where it was going" into one in which everyone now feels they're being pulled in a dozen directions at once. When that point is reached, having all the most talented and best-qualified people on the payroll does nothing to make success easier to achieve. Once in a cultural tug-of-war, increasing the strength of the "tug" in each of the various directions has little or no effect on the outcome.
The antidote for temporary amnesia during hiring interviews is to ask a few key questions that have nothing to do with job-related issues, and everything to do with culture-related ones. For example:
1. What do you do for enjoyment away from work?
Wrong answer: "Oh, mostly watch TV, I guess," or "I like hanging out with friends at [name of local bar]." Answers like these suggest our applicant may be at risk of being taunted to "get a life." Our question is designed to reveal personal levels of enthusiasm—the kind of energy that can reinforce cultural alignment, rather than sap it.
Better answer: "I belong to a [car club, community choir, sports team, etc.]," or "I enjoy [photography, stamp collecting, woodworking, etc.]" This is an individual with hobbies or interests, a person who derives pleasure from feeling that he or she is accomplishing something.
Best answer: "I love [any of the above, or equivalent]." The greater the enthusiasm in the response, the better. Applicants who are highly motivated from the outset have an easier time becoming highly motivated about their new job.
2. Describe your most satisfying job experience ever.
Wrong answer: "One time I got a huge raise." Our object with this question is to gauge the applicant's inherent focus on the interests of others, as opposed to self-interest. Answers that describe satisfaction in purely selfish terms could be danger signs.
Better answer: "One time I [or my work team] achieved a really challenging objective." At least here the organization’s interests took precedence over purely personal ones.
Best answer: "One time I got this amazing feedback from a client I helped." This is the kind of answer that reveals a powerful external focus— of customer focus that can greatly enhance and reinforce cultural alignment.
3. What are the qualities you think an ideal boss would have?
Wrong answer: "I like a boss who's willing to admit [he or she] can be wrong sometimes." The goal here is to fathom the applicant's general attitude toward management. This kind of answer may reveal a predisposition toward an adversarial—rather than collaborative—relationship.
Better answer: "I like a boss who invites my creative ideas and gets me involved in problem-solving." This indicates a willingness to work with management to achieve key objectives.
Best answer: "I like a boss who inspires me to accomplish more than I thought I could." This is an individual eager to achieve outstanding results—and who recognizes that doing so is impossible without management's guidance and participation.
Applying the Knowledge
Remember: Hire for both a "skills fit" and a "cultural fit," and watch your cultural alignment get stronger right before your eyes.
 Editor's Note: Hear more about how to hire right in Paul's "Culture Shift" podcast this week at www.incentivemag.com/cultureshift where he interviews one manager to discover that hiring for "culture fit" always delivers the best results.
We want to hear your feedback on "Culture Shift" columns! Send comments to stacy.straczynski@nielsen.com to let us know what topics you'd like discussed in upcoming episodes of the "Culture Shift."
INCENTIVE online "Culture Shift" columnist Paul Levesque is an author, seminar leader and public speaker with two decades' experience as an international business consultant specializing in the connection between employee motivation and customer satisfaction. He is a senior consultant with Boston-based Novations Inc., and is also founder and CEO of Customer Focus Breakthroughs Inc.
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