Another in our occasional series on recruitment tips and best practice..

The importance of identifying a ‘culture fit’ when recruiting for your business cannot be underestimated. Although it is a concept that can be hard to define, everyone knows when it is missing!

Essentially ‘cultural fit’ means that employees’ beliefs and behaviours are in alignment with their employer’s core values and company culture – and hiring for culture fit means recruiting people who will thrive in your environment.

Before you start interviewing candidates, it is worth going through the exercise of defining your company’s values and long-term objectives, so that evaluating whether candidates share the same ethos as you should be a relatively straightforward process.

Some examples of ‘culture fit’ interview questions:

• Do you prefer working alone or as part of a team? Why?
• Describe the type of work environment in which you are most productive.
• How do you prefer to get feedback from your manager: through formal performance reviews or daily/weekly meetings? Why?
• What do you hope to achieve during your first six months here?
• What would make you leave a job in the first month?
• What would you say or do to motivate your team during a challenging project?
• What’s one thing you like about your current (or previous) job and you’d want here as well?
• Have you ever found a company policy unfair or inefficient? If so, what was the policy and why? What did you do or what would you do, in this case?
• Your manager assigns you a big task right before the end of the day. How would you reply?
• How would you change an institutional “this is how we always do it” attitude, if you felt there was a better approach?

Coming soon in Part II: tips to assess cultural fit during your interviews, and ‘red flag’ insights into candidate who will never fit in.

At Pam Anthony Recruitment, questions on culture fit are part and parcel of our interview process. The questions we ask both clients and candidates are designed to give us a full picture of ‘best fit’, and we are proud of our excellent retention rate as a result.

For more information and interview support and assistance, please call us on +44 (0)1706 231354 or email pam@pamanthony-recruitment.co.uk