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I think the key is to define within the company, what the cultural values are, and then talk about how to check if a person is aligned with them or not. At the
by dvirsky 11y ago
I think the key is to define within the company, what the cultural values are, and then talk about how to check if a person is aligned with them or not.
At the company I work for, we value creativity, independence and taking ownership and responsibility of one's work. It sounds generic but it's not - people who like structured workplaces and process, just wither and don't succeed. So we try to assess that in interviews, and we took the time actually define what are our values (it goes way beyond this example).
Over time we became better at this, and it actually contributed more heterogeneous hires. Since you don't have to assess people on your personal chemistry and how much they're like you personally - you have better tools do do that. This approach opened the door to people who fit with the work culture, even though they're not similar to the core "social DNA" of the team, and that's just fine, it works well for everyone.
- rev_bird 11y agoThis strikes me as striving for "cultural fit" at a company that actually knows what its culture is, or at least what it wants its culture to be. That could genuinely help -- but the actual list seems like the important part. Without the list, it's just finding somebody everyone wants to be friends with.
- dvirsky 11y agoYep, I guess finding someone everyone likes and is similar socially to the team - is a rough approximation, before you defined what your culture actually is or should be. BTW when we sat down and defined it, we tried conveying this to the whole team because not everyone was aligned with those values. One or two people actually came forward after that in private, and said something like "I get what you want from the team, I don't think I can find myself in this culture, and I think it's better for both sides that I leave". I have huge respect for that.