There has been a major sea change in the world of recruitment over the last few years. Changing priorities with younger generations, a demand for flexibility, and the stone-cold reality that everybody changes careers every few years mean that if we want to get the right candidate, we should not focus on having someone who can just do the job, but is a cultural fit. CVs often tell less than half the story. It’s time to undertake a holistic approach and ensure that your candidates are a cultural fit. But how do we incorporate this into our recruitment strategies?
Define Your Company Culture
When you clearly articulate your core values and practices and ensure these values are open enough to enable a diverse selection of people who embody them, you can be sure you will have the right individuals on board. Businesses should take the time to list the principles, beliefs, and behaviours that are most important to them as a business.
Write Appropriate Job Descriptions
Creating descriptions that accurately reflect your company culture alongside the specific role requirements can ensure that you attract the right type of candidate. However, you should avoid mandating a “cultural fit,” as this can result in bias.
Define Your Cultural Fit
The cultural fit needs to be inclusive in definition, which is why you need to break down core values into those that matter for all roles versus specific roles.
Values-Led Recruitment: Why It Is Key
Skills can be taught, but finding the right person is where the difficulty lies, and this is where recruitment consultancies such as us can be very helpful. Value-led recruitment is the way forward to getting the right person while also encompassing a successful recruitment strategy. Here are some key reasons why your company would benefit from values-based recruitment:
- It attracts candidates who are aligned with your company’s purpose, mission, and culture. Modern candidates don’t just want a job that matches their skill sets; they want to work for organisations where their values resonate with them. Employees who share your core values are going to be a better long-term fit, and they will be more productive, satisfied, and inclined to stay with the business over many years.
- You can assess a candidate’s character and integrity beyond mere skills. If you want to create a strong workplace culture, you need to hire people who will uphold your values rather than just have the ability to do the job.
- Candidates’ values and behaviours can be better indicators of how they perform in the long term. By focusing on values, you can attract a wider range of candidates while still maintaining your desired workplace culture. A holistic and consultative approach to recruitment beats the transactional one-size-fits-all hiring methods that are no longer fit for purpose.
Why a Holistic Approach is Key to Hiring the Right Candidate
It Goes Beyond Qualifications and Experience
An old-fashioned approach is to look at a candidate’s CV and judge them based on that alone. Plenty of valuable skills can be taught and learned, which means that when you look for potential rather than the perfect fit, you have access to a wider talent pool.
It Prioritises Values and Culture
When you intentionally incorporate values and culture into the interview process, you will identify who aligns with your company culture and understands your vision, which makes them more motivated and easier to retain.
It Deliberately Seeks Diverse Talent
Holistic hiring methods actively avoid conscious or unconscious bias. Creating an inclusive workplace should begin with actively looking for diversity.
It Focuses on Potential, Not Performance
Many jobs are going unfilled in the modern climate because of short-sighted recruitment strategies that focus purely on whether someone can do the job today. When you look at the potential of a candidate in terms of their abilities to fit in with the organisation, you are also creating potential leaders who can keep the company afloat. There is a saying, “A fish rots from the head down,” and therefore, if you have ineffective leadership with sheer ignorance of cultural fit, actively focusing on a candidate that has potential and long-term goals means you are slowly transforming the organisation one person at a time.
A holistic approach is so important these days, and this is where we can provide you with support. We can qualify candidates against their skills as well as their culture or values, including psychometric testing, ensuring that you don’t just have someone who can do the job and leave in a number of months, but actually will learn and grow alongside you.
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