Match: A Systematic, Sane Process for Hiring the Right Person Every Time

Chapter 4. Clarify the Corporate Culture

If you build that foundation, both the moral and the ethical foundation, as well as the business foundation, and the experience foundation, then the building won't crumble.

—Henry Kravis

While your mission statement conveys your values, purpose, and daring goals, your company expresses that mission through its culture. In order to hire someone that augments that mission, your hiring team must clearly understand that culture.

What is your company's approach to, say, deadlines? Will people work overtime to meet a deadline, or does the deadline move to accommodate people's schedules? And how do people normally communicate—by email? Phone? Instant message? Personal one-on-one conversations? For that matter, how much do people talk about their home lives while at work? All of these answers speak to the state of your company's culture.

Note

Sticky Notes:

• Assess your company's culture using the scorecard.

• Assess the culture of the candidate's department.

• Compare company and department cultural assessments.

Corporate culture is extraordinarily difficult to measure but imperative in making a great hire. This difficultly arises because you sit in the middle of your corporate culture every day. It's like trying to get a fish to describe the ocean—unless you have seen land to compare it to, the ocean just simply is.

Your Hiring Team and the Scorecard

I hope by this point you've recognized that I am a hiring pragmatist. The MATCH process is an objective collection ...