“Company culture” and “cultural fit” are phrases of growing importance in the minds of world-leading organizations, and their hiring processes.
Culture is not easy to quickly define or measure, but with a little reflection and introspection, we can help you identify your company culture, and even more importantly, how your new hires can best fit into it.
So that’s why we’re here, to take a deep dive into the best setups for a company culture interview. Follow these guidelines to have your new recruits integrated with the harmonious office culture you’ve worked so hard to cultivate.
Let’s do this!
What is a culture interview?
A culture interview refers to interviewing a new hire to see how they align with your specific organizational culture. As you interview them, you focus on questions that give insights into things like how they work, their core values, and how these values mesh with your own company values.
In the 21st century, hiring is about so much more than just skills. Organizational culture has established itself as a cornerstone for company success, and so the recruitment process needs to make sure the new hire isn’t just an amazing worker by themselves. There’s no such thing as a “one-man-team,” so they need to be able to integrate into the workplace structure and culture properly, too.
When done correctly, a culture interview (sometimes also called a culture audition) brings new levels to workplace harmony. There’s a reason why HR departments feel culture interviews are so important, from global titans to rapid-response startups.
Southwest Airlines, for example, emphasizes screening employees with a “warrior spirit, servant’s heart and fun-LUVing attitude.” Their company culture still hires to find attitudes of “people first,” so candidates in their interviews who fit this culture go further.
Another example is Zappos, the billion-dollar online clothing store. Their CEO openly states that even the most talented individuals won’t be hired if they don’t gel with “Zappos Family Core Values.” They’ve designed a very quirky 4-stage interview technique that’s creating waves in the hiring industry.
So as we can see, culture interviews help companies reinforce their workplace culture by bringing in staff that complement and enhance the organization’s values. So how exactly do you design and set up a culture interview? Let’s break it down.
Designing a culture interview
Here’s our 4-step guide to designing a strong culture interview:
Step 1: Setting your goals
So let’s kick things off by getting into your company goals and objectives. A culture interview without clear goals could just end up as a loose “banter session,” with questions being too open-ended and personality-based. Address your core values first, are you a company that most values trustworthiness, kindness or resilience? Show this off loudly and proudly.
As you interview your candidate, you might already have a “red flag” system in place, meaning that if the candidate shows or says one of these red flags, you won’t proceed with the hiring process. But could it be the case that your flagging system is a little too strict, harsh, or outdated? This is relevant in particular to “adhocracy” work cultures who hire radical thinkers who aren’t afraid to speak their minds. A “red flag” this year might become an insightful principle next year as the company culture evolves, so an “orange flag” system helps monitor candidates as they move forward.
Speaking of long-term compatibility, keep employee career alignment as a goal. Sometimes the perfect candidate you are interviewing right now might not be the best fit for the current stage the company is at. You’ve got to be forward-thinking in goal-setting, so keep the future in mind for your culture interviews.
Step 2: Choose the right interviewer(s)
Okay, so you’re ready for your candidates to be interviewed and you have the company goals ready and proudly displayed. Now it’s time to really think about who is the best person (or people) to be the messenger of cultural fit and run the interview itself. Would the best cultural audition come from a panel of interviewers, or one individual with the soft skills to test company alignment?
Both options are viable, but we recommend contextualizing the interview first. If you’re aiming for a deep dive into a candidate’s ability to fit into a task-based work culture, for example, you might want to choose a representative who knows a task’s details inside-out.
Perhaps your company culture is more clan-based, like a system with a “family atmosphere” where group harmony is key. Here, a panel of two or more interviewers with really harmonious relationships would work best. Consider making your panel of interviewers as diverse as possible, from their experience and age to their personal background.
Sometimes interviewers from outside the department the candidate will be joining work well too. An extra interview panelist from a different department offers fresh eyes that are great at recognizing cultural fit. Make sure your messengers are correct and trust in your team’s abilities to get the interviewees right!
Step 3: Design (and redefine) your questions
So how do you measure “kindness” within work culture? How can you test for “resilience” in an adhocracy? It takes a deep understanding of your inner-work culture to craft questions that test soft skills in a group setting (don’t worry, we have tailored questions coming later). The point is, that you’ve got to break big cultural concepts down into specific traits and behaviors to find out if a candidate is a good cultural fit.
Once you’ve broken down and highlighted your precise company culture, you can really think about how your core values manifest in the work setting. As you interview your groups of candidates, keep the questions consistent. If you measure each candidate too differently, your insights won’t be as accurate.
Your opening questions should help ease the candidate into the interview. There’s no point coming out swinging with deep technical questions. Most candidates answer better after they’ve loosened up. Figure out what motivates them and how they came to find your company and its vacancy in the first place.
Then roll into your heavier scenario-based questions in the middle of the interview. Get specific with your work scenarios and task-based questioning, and make the most of good follow-up questions. This works especially well with candidates who might be a little nervous or quiet. Sometimes their most concise answers come after their first try, giving a much more accurate representation of their cultural fit.
For the final stages of the interview, add some questions that expand the focus beyond just work. Make the final questions fun, too! A person’s core values apply just as much to their work performance as their hobbies and interests outside of the office. Younger candidates especially, those who might not have huge amounts of work experience, might demonstrate stellar strengths in what they do outside of work. There’s a lot to learn here about their potential to fit in well with your company culture!
Step 4: Run the interview!
All systems go! You’ve got the pillars of company goals, ideal interviewers, and specific questions ready for your cultural audition. Now’s the time to trust in your abilities to dig deep into cultural alignment.
Company culture isn’t a phrase with an extremely long history, and for a lot of candidates, it might be a brand-new concept to them. Be clear and give context upfront about how you hope to get them to gel into your work culture. You don’t want to surprise or scare them into thinking too deeply and pretending to be someone they are not.
A great potential system is to actually have two interviews, the first one being more traditional, and the second one being culture-specific. That way you can dive more deeply into how the candidate fits in.
As you run your culture interview, make sure they have enough room in the question to dig around and form their responses. Don’t apply too much pressure. Also, be clear that you aren’t giving them “trick” questions to catch them out if you think clarification is needed.
Many candidates have learned that traditional “weakness” and “past mistake” questions are sometimes a kind of “trap” that they need to somehow navigate around. There’s no need to make the interview cloudy and indirect with trick questions.
With these four steps, your candidates are much more likely to take to your work culture like a fish to water! Try them all out for the best results.
Example questions for cultural interviews
While the cultural interview might vary in tone and format depending on your candidate and interview panelists, here’s a list of effective questions for a cultural audition in the interview:
Q: How do you handle unexpected changes or challenges at work? Can you provide an example of a time when you had to innovate on the spot?
This question gets straight into assessing the candidate’s adaptability and creative skills. They can highlight what they saw as their own challenges, even if the difficulties were overlooked by previous employers.
Useful for which type of company culture?
Adhocracy/task-based work cultures.
Q: How do you ensure your work aligns with our guidelines? Describe a situation where you followed a specific procedure to achieve a goal.
This gets into the nitty-gritty of seeing how the candidate understands and respects structure in the workplace. Their response demonstrates how they respond to order and seniority alignment if you have a more rigid work system.
Useful for which type of company culture?
Hierarchical/clan-based work cultures.
Q: How do customer needs fit into your work? Share an example of how you went above and beyond for a customer.
This question quickly gets into how the candidate relates to what the customer wants and how they can adapt to changing expectations. The provider/customer relationship can extend to other clients, if you don’t directly supply a customer.
Useful for which type of company culture?
Customer-first/adhocracy cultures
Q: What does your perfect work team look like? How would you contribute to it and where do you best fit into it?
This question opens up the imagination of the interviewee and illustrates teams they might have worked with in the past. The candidate can showcase how much they value teamwork and communication as one part of a larger team.
Useful for which type of company culture?
Clan-based culture.
Identifying your company culture
As the questions above are tailored to each style of company culture, here’s a quick reference table to identify your company’s cultural style.
Solidify your company culture on one of our retreats!
So you understand the power and value of company culture, and want to set yours in stone for the years to come? We totally understand why.
We even had the chance to hear from Stephanie Lee, the Team Experience Manager at Buffer on exactly how “Company culture is created at retreats.”
So, have you considered laying the foundations of your organizational culture on a teambuilding retreat?
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