Why you should be looking at your company culture

Company culture has always been important, but it has gained more and more important in the last decade or so. Now, as we get used to the new normal and the perks and challenges of remote work, company culture has become even more important as the modern workplace continues to evolve.

But first, what is company culture? It is the set of shared values, practices, and goals that characterize an organization. In other words, it refers to the common ethos of a company, its nature, and the way its workers live and breathe the company’s core values, from the CEO to the newest intern. Simply put, company culture is how workers live and work within the workplace. It is how they feel about the work they do, the values they abide by, and the goals that motivate them day by day. 

So why is it so important?  According to Fobes, there are clear benefits to having a strong, unified company culture:

• Identity. Company culture contributes to the identity and values of your company. It’s a good way to set and maintain the direction of your employees, and without it, it’s hard to keep your company’s work coherent.
• Retention. When workers feel like they belong to an organization, they’re more likely to stick around for the long term. A strong company culture attracts better talent and, more importantly, retains that talent.
• Image. Corporate culture also adds to your brand identity. If you maintain a good employee experience and healthy atmosphere, your customers will see you as a good brand to be associated with.

The importance of Company Culture goes far beyond the environment of the office; it impacts every facet of the business. Therefore, it is no surprise that companies that actively manage to keep a good and permanent culture maintain higher employee retention and boast higher employee engagement rates than those with weak cultures. 

Cultural fit for the win

As stated above, company culture is the essence of a business and impacts every asset of it, from how the work is organized internally to the way the company does business externally. Therefore, it is not sufficient for companies to maintain a strong culture; it is crucial to find talent that holds cultural compatibility with your business and that will aby to your company culture at all times. In other words, it is not enough to find candidates with the right skills; companies should be looking for talent in sync with their personality and values too. This is what we call cultural fit. 

Let’s think about it like any type of relationship; finding a good cultural fit means finding someone who believes in your company’s mission and shares a similar outlook and attitude as their potential colleagues. Therefore, you should be looking for candidates that share similar beliefs, attitudes, and values aligned with your company.  

If you are struggling to identify your company culture, there are plenty of tools to help you start. In the meantime, don’t stress and keep it simple; just identify what makes your company tick and align your recruitment accordingly. For example, if your company focuses on innovation and risk-taking, you should be looking for employees who are eager to participate and challenge the status quo to constantly find ways to innovate and develop new ideas. On the other hand, if your company follows a strong hierarchical structure, your HR team should be looking for candidates that prefer an established order regarding power and decision-making. 

So, why is cultural fit so important? Well, as in any type of relationship, when there’s a good match, the union thrives. When a company hires the right people, people actually want to work every day and enjoy collaborating with their co-workers, as they feel valued and appreciated within the organization. Here are some advantages of achieving a strong cultural fit:

• Fewer turnovers. People stay in jobs they like, as simple as that. Cultural fit allows workers to feel more invested in the success of the company, which makes them more likely to stick around.
• Better performance. When workers feel like they belong, they are more likely to be active participants in the company’s projects and become more productive.
• Better collaboration. Employees who are excited about their work will create a healthy working environment. They are more likely to share their knowledge and experience with others as they don’t see them as competition but rather work together as colleagues.
• Improved communication. When employees feel supported by their managers and team leaders, communication is hardly an issue.
• Increased employee satisfaction. Happy employees are productive, engaged, and motivated to succeed.

No wonder why 75% of recruiters say that cultural fit is more important than work history and experience in the hiring process. 

Cultural fit has become even more important since remote culture became the new trend. Mainly because when a team doesn’t interact physically every day, it is easy for employees to start pursuing their own goals instead of the company’s goals. The lack of strong cultural fit at the time of hiring will eventually different teams to have different cultures.

How to hire for culture fit

Not having a strong cultural fit when hiring remote employees results in a lack of collaboration (which in turn leads to loss of time and money and project delays). Also, it will be challenging to grow a team because it will be difficult to know what makes a successful employee in a given team. This leads to lowered team performance, higher turnover, and bad hires.

At Intersog, we would never want you to go through the aforementioned struggles, so we gathered some helpful tips to help you achieve a strong cultural fit from the get-go when hiring remotely.

• Know your culture. First and foremost, it is important to have your company culture clear. Remember, if you don’t know what you are looking for, you won’t find it. Therefore, it is crucial for you and your team to have a clear understanding of your company culture and always have it in mind throughout your recruitment process.
• Know what you need. It is common for a recruitment team to know what skills to look for in the search for new talent; however, it is as important to know what kind of values a potential hiree has to fit right into the company. Your Human Resources should get crystal clear on the values or attributes that will support the position and add value to the team.
• Know the background. Try to incorporate some general cultural background checks within your hiring process. Find out more about your potential employee, how they solve problems, and their attitude toward certain situations. This will give you a sense of a cultural fit possibility.
• Know what to ask. Try to plan your interviews around questions that go beyond skills. If you already know what cultural attributes you need from a potential hiree to make a good cultural fit, try to lead some questions around how a candidate has demonstrated competency in specific areas. Behavioral questions are fantastic for identifying if a candidate has what you need.
• Know how to partner with. The hiring process for remote talent can be daunting. Having a local partner like Intersog can save you lots of time and resources. Having an ally that it’s established in the region will help you spot the right talent that aligns with the cultural, social, and business values that benefit your business operations.

Finding the right cultural fit for your company can positively impact your business in more ways than one. The end goal is to identify your culture and hire the best candidates whose skills and attributes match the organization’s core values with the help of an expert partner already established in the region. ​​

With over 15 years of experience providing top-performing staffing solutions that help businesses succeed in the digital world, let us help you extend your engineering team with highly skilled global talent that will fit your company perfectly. Let’s ride the tech wave and make great things happen.

Finding the best talent for an open position at your company can be a challenging task. The COVID-19 pandemic has put extra pressure on some sectors like the tech industry and made the process even more of a slog.

With the IT talent shortage that has become even more of an issue in light of recent events, finding the right candidates for your open position can be a struggle. For many businesses, the key to a successful hiring strategy is developing and implementing a robust recruitment pipeline process.

What is a Recruitment Pipeline?

In a nutshell, a recruitment pipeline refers to a system of hiring which funnels candidates through a step-by-step process that hopefully leads to a hire. It sounds simple, but creating a hiring pipeline that filters out the best candidates and has a solid hire rate can be tricky.

What the recruitment pipeline does for you and your business is accelerate the hiring process while also providing you with key insights you can leverage to streamline the system. It can be seen as an organized approach to recruitment. You establish the important criteria from the beginning and filter all potential candidates through it to speed up the process.

The recruitment pipeline will vary according to the type of open position and other factors, but usually, it should cover the following key stages of the hiring process:

Screening

The screening process can be time-consuming, so to create an efficient recruitment timeline, it’s worth finding ways to make it less so. For example, this could mean ruling out candidates based on strict criteria you’ve established such as particular qualifications.

Interview

The interview process is crucial as it’s your opportunity to put the candidates in the spotlight and cross-examine them. To make it more streamlined, you can draw up a list of go-to questions that solicit the kind of answers you’re looking for to fill the vacancy.

Evaluation

Finally, the evaluation process is all about sifting through shortlisted candidates to find the perfect fit for your vacancy. To speed it up, you could come up with a procedure for determining which candidate is a better fit, based on certain criteria such as experience or qualifications.

Why do you Need One?

You need a recruitment pipeline because the chances are if you haven’t assessed your recruitment strategy in a while, and you’re struggling to fill new roles, then it could be optimized.

Specifically, a hiring pipeline could help you with the following:

Faster Hiring

One of the biggest problems recruiters face is keeping up with the demands of the hiring company. Filling open positions is a key process to stay on top of business operations, yet finding the talent quickly isn’t easy.

However, with a solid recruitment pipeline, you can accelerate the process keeping those at the top of the company satisfied. 

Talent Pool Development

Often, the worst-case scenario with the hiring process is that the competition is fierce to fill the position. This is all-too-common in the tech talent crisis we’re experiencing, and it seems like employees at the large tech firms have all the power in their hands.

In this case, what you need to do is establish a recruitment pipeline that acts as a net, catching potential talent each time it’s cast out. That way, you can grow a talent pool that you can dip into in the future should a job become vacant that fits one of the candidates.

How can you Optimize your Recruitment Pipeline?

Fortunately, while the talent might be hard to come by, there are ways to accelerate your recruitment pipeline so when the right candidate does come along you can snap them up quickly.

Diversify your Talent Sourcing

When it comes to recruitment, one thing’s for sure: the more sources you draw your talent from, the more fruitful the process is likely to be.

If you rely on just a single talent source, such as a networking platform like LinkedIn, then the talent might dry up quickly. That’s why diversification is key.

Some of the best ways to source candidates include in-house events if you have the resources, referrals, and even tapping into an existing talent pool that you’ve created. As mentioned earlier, developing a talent pool you can dip into again and again is a beneficial byproduct of developing a solid recruitment pipeline.

Don’t Exclude Existing Employees

A common mistake when establishing a recruitment pipeline is omitting existing employees from the process. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t look both internally and externally for talent.

Granted, existing employees might not have the requisite skills for the vacancy, but if you’re struggling to make a hire there’s always upskilling.

What is upskilling?

Upskilling refers to the process of retraining talent within the company in order to boost their skillset and perhaps even prepare them for a different role. This process does require company resources and a willingness on the part of the employee, though, so it should be seen as more of a last resort.

Broaden your Recruitment Horizons

The recruitment pipeline should be about finding the right candidate for the position, and as such, out-of-the-box thinking is sometimes needed to aid the search.

Here are some alternate recruitment strategies that could help you secure the right talent for the job:

Outsourcing

Sometimes the talent pool in your local area has dried up, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up the search. Nearshore delegating is all about outsourcing work to a team or agency in a nearby country. The benefits of this are that you can work in a similar time zone with minimal cultural differences and perhaps even save money in the process.

Hire a Contractor

Did you know that freelancers make up around 35% of the global workforce?

This figure is staggering, and with the disruption and digital transformation caused by the pandemic, you’d have to assume this figure is set to grow.

The global freelance market is an excellent resource for any recruitment pipeline as it can speed up the hiring process and open up a significant talent pool to you.

It’s imperative to take initiative now that the tech talent crisis seems worse than ever, and the first step you should take is to review your recruitment pipeline process. Once you’ve optimized the way you hire, the company should be able to create a talent pool and fill open positions much more efficiently. This should stand you in good stead, even in the competitive market of today.