Recruiting & Hiring Blog for HR Professionals

We would all like to think that our employees know the difference between right and wrong in the workplace. But do your employees know where to turn in a crisis? 

As HR pros, we live, die, eat and breathe by our company culture. It plays a significant part in how we recruit and hire too. Evaluating culture fit helps us look beyond candidates’ qualifications to determine if their attitudes, work ethic and workplace values align with those of the company.

But how do you talk about your  culture to a potential employee? More importantly, how do you define your culture so that it’s clear, translatable and transferrable throughout your organization? We believe it starts with understanding what culture really is and what it isn’t, which we reveal below:

Finding candidates who meet the required skills and qualifications for your open positions may be your top priority when it comes to hiring. But in addition to hiring based on your job requirements, you should focus on hiring candidates who fit best within your company’s culture. Assessing culture fit will allow you to look beyond the candidates’ experience and qualifications to determine if attitudes, work ethic and workplace values align with your company.

Experts suggest a cultural misfit is the No. 1 reason new hires leave a job. To avoid the cost of a potentially wrong hire, you should make culture fit assessments part of the hiring and recruiting process. According to hiring expert Lou Adler, there are a few key areas of an applicant’s work experience HR can focus on to assess culture fit. Here we discuss three of those focus areas and provide questions you can ask throughout the candidate screening and interview process.

It appears that hiring and wages in the service sector are heating up. The Society for Human Resource Management’s most recent Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) report suggests that service providers expected September hiring rates to increase 14.6 points compared to one year ago, while in August new hire compensation in the service sector increased 6.7 points compared to last year. 

In the business world, brands connect companies and customers. They also distinguish an organization’s products or services from those of competitors. The world of recruiting is no different – your talent brand serves as a link between you and potential new employees. According to LinkedIn, talent brands incorporate what past, present, and potential employees think, feel, and share about a company as a place to work. 

So, why is having a strong talent brand important? Just as companies with strong product brands have large, loyal customer bases – think Apple – organizations with strong talent brands attract large numbers of quality candidates for open positions. That translates into new hires who have the skills you need and are likely to fit well with your company culture. It also means that HR doesn’t have to resort to costly recruiting alternatives like search firms to find candidates. Research suggests that companies with strong talent brands have lower turnover rates and a lower cost per hire.