Cultivating your purpose-driven culture by recruiting for fit
Have you ever felt pressured into hiring someone? Maybe it’s the critical nature the vacant position plays in helping you execute your strategy or perhaps you and your existing team are buckling under the weight of the work you will be handing off to the new hire. Too many times, I have seen hiring managers succumb to the trap of filling a critical vacancy with any “belly button” only to discover that there is a mismatch of fit between the incumbent and the needs of the company. This inevitably results in wasted time and precious resources while creating unproductive disruption for the team that creates drag for the company.
Last week’s article focused on actions leaders can take to build a critical mass of purpose-driven individuals among those with whom you already work. In this week’s installment in the Purpose-Driven Culture Series, we turn our attention to how you can add people to the team who are not only technically capable but will fuel momentum for cultivating your purpose-driven culture.
A Quick Recap of What a Purpose-Driven Culture Is and Why It’s Important
As noted in previous EverSparq articles, purpose-driven culture promotes connection, high engagement, and meaningful productivity gains by making work resonate on a personal level. (In the EverSparq article Connecting to Purpose: Creating a Purpose-Driven Culture, I outlined the Purpose-Driven Strategic Framework (Figure 1) and provided 5 tips for how to connect employees’ personal sense of purpose to the specific elements of the framework to support a purpose-driven culture).
We may not always realize it but there is almost always something deep within each of us that motivates and drives us even during the most challenging times. Our true North. Helping individuals identify what that is and then determining how that applies in their daily work creates a level of meaning that is incredibly profound. This increases a personal sense of ownership and accountability for the success of the company and manifests in ways such as higher productivity, better quality work, and achievement of goals that, when aligned properly using the Purpose-Driven Strategic Framework, can propel companies forward in successful strategy execution.
Sourcing Right-Fit Talent with Intention
In the previous article in this series, I focused on the importance of creating cultural transformation with the talent you already have, ideally before you begin inviting new individuals into the team. What potential new hires see, hear, and experience from existing employees has a significant impact on whether they will want to join you on your journey. Here are 7 steps to consider as you recruit new talent into your purpose-driven culture:
1. Be Clear on What You Need
- Technical Skills
This is where most hiring managers start but is by no means the only consideration when preparing to recruit. One way to approach this is to enumerate the tasks and objectives you expect of the vacant role. Then determine what technical skills will be required for an incumbent to be successful. What do these tactical activities reflect in terms of accountability? - Values & Cultural Fit
Here’s where hiring teams tend to get a bit hazier. Hiring new talent is the perfect opportunity to promote company values. Start with a list of the company values and then describe what persona and work style would be the best fit for the purpose-driven culture you are seeking to promote and hardwire. Describing what the ideal incumbent would look like and how they would operate compared to a poor fit candidate can be a concrete and illuminating exercise for getting clear on what you expect. Sometimes it is easier to start with what you are not seeking to spark what it is you are seeking. Here are some examples:
2. Document Your Expectations
Translate your thoughts into tangible reference documents. There are two high yield documents you will need to nail down early in the process to help you clarify what you are looking for in an ideal fit individual:
- Job Description
List a limited number of key accountabilities or outcomes for which the incumbent is expected to deliver rather than a laundry list of activities. Save the latter detail for discussion with candidates later during the interview process or add as an appendix to the job description. Depending on the degree of formality in your organization for approving job descriptions, excluding highly specific activities from the job description can save you the time of having to constantly curate, update, and approve the document. Here are some key components of a comprehensive job description for your consideration:
Background | A brief description of the company, the department, and the purpose of the position and the reporting relationships
Accountabilities | Include no more than 6-8 descriptions of key outcomes and/or functions for which the position is expected to deliver.
Values & Behavioral Expectations | List your company values with easy-to-understand descriptions, e.g., “Collaboration: the ability to team up and create mutual understanding to achieve optimal results”.
Experience | Level of experience (typically in years), any relevant degrees or certifications
- Job Summary
This is typically a single paragraph that succinctly summarizes the general scope of the role so that candidates, recruiters, and other team members can easily grasp what you have in mind without needing to dig into the details of the job description. I like to think of this as the elevator pitch for the vacant position. This can be used to broadcast that you’re hiring.
3. Generate Alignment
In some circumstances, recruitment activities may be the exclusive responsibility of a single individual. More often, the hiring manager will benefit from incorporating the input of others. Stakeholders may include search committee members, coworkers who will interact with the new hire, recruiters, and other leaders who oversee areas that intersect with the new position. Whatever the situation, every recruitment exercise is a valuable opportunity to reset and ensure common understanding and alignment around not only the position(s) in question but how those positions support achievement of the company strategies and vision.
Tap into the job description and profile as appropriate to help you in messaging and generating clarity and shared understanding. It is never too soon in the recruiting process to start this and in doing so, you will be positioning the new hire for success by cutting down on unnecessary role confusion or territorialism from coworkers later.
4. Leverage Diverse Networks
The talent pool will only be as diverse as the networks you tap into. In addition to engaging search firms, consider seeking out others on your team and in your network with connections that reflect a broader array of diverse skills, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and work experiences. Seek out recruiters with diverse “rolodexes”. Be thoughtful about where to post your job vacancies (professional societies, cultural/ethnic societies, job boards, etc.)
5. Create an Organized Interview Experience
There are at least three critical interfaces that you want to get “right” with candidates: (1) the initial recruiter interaction, (2) the screening interview with the hiring manager, and (3) the “site visit”. The degree of organization and professionalism during each of these interactions will send powerful signals to candidates about what kind of organization you are cultivating.
- The Initial Recruiter Interaction
I have seen hiring managers expect recruiters to understand what type of candidates they are seeking with very little information. This often translates for the candidates as receiving mixed messages between the recruiter and the hiring manager. Investing a little time upfront with the recruiter to help calibrate your mutual expectations can pay big dividends as you navigate the talent sourcing and acquisition process.
Review the job description and the Values & Cultural Fit characteristics you’ve identified and pressure test your respective interpretations by describing candidate archetypes that each of you would view as viable vs. non-viable candidates and explain why. Continue this dialogue and as the recruiter screens candidates– this will get easier the more practice you have together. - The Screening Interview with the Hiring Manager
After a recruiter has screened a potential candidate and recommends them to the hiring manager for further consideration, conducting an initial interview as the hiring manager can be a highly effective way to make an initial decision whether to ask interviewers to invest their valuable time in meeting a candidate as well as identifying areas worth further investigation if a candidate is advance to the site visit phase. Depending on the size and pace of growth of an organization, interviews can end up consuming a lot of time so make sure to make these count. - The Site Visit
Prior to the COVID pandemic, it was not uncommon for candidates to have an opportunity to visit the corporate offices or sites where they would be working if hired. As experience has shown, site visits can also be effectively managed virtually. Not every position requires an in-person site visit, which can be costly and overkill depending on the level and impact of a role on the organization.
When advancing a candidate from the initial screening interview to a site visit, you will want to be prepared with some structure for the experience.
- How important is it to involve other stakeholders in the interview process both from the point of view of the candidate and the benefit of your interviewers?
- Who needs to meet with candidates and why? What are the benefits of 1:1 interviews vs. a panel/small group interview? Consider whether it would be useful to either accompany candidates or have a delegate like the recruiter be present during interviews. Although not absolutely necessary or practical, this can sometimes help you gather insights into the degree of fidelity across stakeholders regarding the position and cut down on mixed messages that candidates experience. I have reserved this approach for when I am introducing a brand-new type of role into an organization.
- Incorporate clear expectations into interviewer materials to make it intuitive and easy for them:
- Interviewer Cover Letter. This typically includes what you, as the hiring manager who is making a decision on behalf of the company, are seeking in a successful incumbent (e.g., the Values & Cultural Fit criteria), sample behavioral-based questions that interviewers might use to evaluate candidates in a more focused manner to align with these expectations, and a list of topics and questions that should be avoided during an interview to comply with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations.
- Evaluation Form. Provide an easy to complete form that captures data to empower the hiring manager with valuable insights into a candidate’s technical and behavioral capabilities as outlined in the Job Description.
- Behavioral-Based Questions. To maximize the yield from the interview, share guidance on how to phrase questions around specific situations and examples rather than broad open-ended, theoretical questions. This targeted style of inquiry will increase the ability of the interviewer to elicit more accurate insight into a candidate’s skills and abilities compared to broad, open-ended questions that tend to elicit generic, theoretical responses that reflect what the candidate thinks the interviewer wants to hear regardless of whether this is truly reflective of the candidate’s actual skills and abilities.
- How important is it to involve other stakeholders in the interview process both from the point of view of the candidate and the benefit of your interviewers?
Debrief with the recruiter and relevant team members after the conclusion of an interview to see what worked well and what needs to be adjusted for next time.
6. Deliberate on Whether or Not to Make an Offer
By following the preceding steps, you will have put your best foot forward in selling the merits of your company and the purpose-driven culture you are building. Ideally, highly desirable candidates will remain interested and excited about the prospect of joining your team. However, this may also be true for those candidates that may not be the right fit.
This step is where I often see hiring managers falter the most. Out of a desire to fill the position and move on, it is not unusual for the hiring manager to talk themselves into why a particular candidate could be a good fit. Having to convince yourself is typically a signal that you need to pause and reflect. Remind yourself of the ideal candidate characteristics you outlined previously as a more objective basis for comparison for the candidate(s). Ask yourself if it’s more important for you to take the risk of hiring a potentially poor fit candidate versus waiting longer in the hopes of finding someone more appropriate.
If the interview process involved input from multiple stakeholders, synthesize the feedback into key themes related to the technical and behavioral requirements. Passionate disagreements from interviewers about whether to make an offer may also provide valuable insight. Are the conflicting points of view due to insufficient clarity about the role or is it possible that the candidate may not be the right fit? This may also reflect a dysfunctional management team, which is a topic for another time. On occasion, if I have an isolated pocket of dissention or concern regarding a candidate that otherwise appears to fit the bill, I will spend time seeking to understand more from the relevant interviewer(s) to determine whether the concern can be suitably addressed or not.
You may find yourself saying no to candidates and starting the process over. While this can be frustrating and challenging, filling a position with someone you know is not the right fit is a disservice to you, the team, and the candidate.
I have yet to meet anyone who can legitimately boast about hiring the perfect fit 100% of the time. But by leveraging the tools and process you have designed along with thoughtful review of interviewer feedback, you have a much better chance of making a right fit decision.
7. Make the Offer & Close the Deal
This step can be a bit of an art. For those who retain a recruiter, making the offer may be delegated to them. But depending on the circumstances, as the hiring manager, directly negotiating an offer with a candidate can be very illuminating and may provide you with some insights about how you might jumpstart the new hire’s onboarding should you be able to arrive at mutually agreeable terms.
Drafting an offer letter outlining the specific terms such as, start date, base compensation, benefits, bonus structure (if applicable), and other elements of the total rewards package is a good way to organize your thoughts. Review the terms with the candidate before sharing the document in case any modifications are indicated. Be prepared with what you will and will not be able to accommodate if asked to negotiate any of the terms and be up front and clear about it with the candidate. And remember that while the tangible rewards matter, so does the cultural impression you have made during the recruitment process.
Conclusion
Recruiting new talent into your company is an opportunity to re-level set your expectations and those of your team in terms of the needs of the company. Having a clear plan for managing the recruitment process in alignment with the behavioral fit that supports your purpose-driven culture removes the background noise and can enhance your ability to make better, more objective decisions. It will also reduce the risk of poor hiring decisions that can have significant detrimental impacts on team culture, morale, and resources.
And when things do not work out as you had planned, exercise grace for yourself and those involved and determine what your learned that will inform how you get better moving forward.
Stay tuned for future articles on other ways to cultivate and retain the type of talent that will help you build and sustain your purpose-driven culture including onboarding to compress the time from start date to making contributions as well as managing performance.
For questions or to find out how EverSparq can help you design any of the tools described in this article or the right fit process for your company, please contact info@eversparq.com.
