It looks like 2016 is going to be a busy year from a leadership transition perspective and I watch incredible effort put forth by members of our team for EVERY recruitment project regardless of geographic location or functional focus. We watch, we listen, we learn; always trying to identify ways to make our process more effective with the ultimate goal of making our client’s lives easier. Given the backgrounds of our team, we have a pretty solid handle on assessing technical capabilities and experience to meet the demands of understanding a position profile and our client objectives. We can deliver a full slate of highly qualified candidates – every time. Then why does this process seem to becoming more and more challenging by the week, day, hour, and minute?
The old expression about culture eating strategy for breakfast/lunch (or is it dinner?) seems to be playing a more prevalent role in every hiring process. I have great appreciation for the hard work that goes into developing a robust corporate culture truly embraced top down in an organization and the resulting success from both an employee satisfaction and financial performance perspective. Where I’m challenged is the often recurring and at times alarming disconnects we see throughout an organization in the interpretation and understanding of corporate culture. Layer these disconnects on top of the “war for talent” and you my friends have a problem on your hands.
I thought this was a great article that drills down on the incredible value-add of aligning a fully developed and truly embraced corporate culture with the recruitment and hiring process, but also the misfires that can easily result in not understanding who we are and where we’re going. Culture needs to be more than the mission statement agreed upon in the board room. With the ubiquitous use of panel and cross functional interviews, a vague understanding or inconsistent application of a cultural filter can have a damaging impact on the recruitment process. The individuals participating in interviews should live and breathe the culture and have the ability to assess the needs for cultural alignment. If not, their participation can have a negative impact on recruitment and potentially a negative impact on the organization.
–
Mike
