3 Exceptional Technological Innovations That Can Help HR Leaders in Hiring for Culture Fit
If you’re wondering why most companies struggle to acquire top talent — and why keeping top performers often becomes a losing proposition — the answer could be as easy as hiring for culture fit.
According to a Cubiks survey, 82% of respondents thought gauging cultural fit was an essential aspect of the hiring process. Yet, just 54% stated their companies had a clearly defined business culture.
The hiring process for cultural fit is inherently risky since it is so open to interpretation and is influenced by personal preference and gut hunch.
What can we do about it? We reject the notion that cultural fit cannot be codified.
We can and should define it because when the decision-making process is codified and data-driven, the chances of making a successful cultural fit hire increase considerably. And this is where the correct technological innovations can help a hiring manager in recruiting to enhance the company’s culture.
How Technological Improvements Help in Hiring for Cultural Fit
1. Assessments of Cultural Fit Standardize and Quantify Cultural Alignment
Arecent Deloitte study states that “critical new skills are scarce — and their uneven distribution around the world is prompting firms to discover imaginative new ways to locate people, build capabilities, and share expertise.”
If you looked into the root causes of wrong cultural fit hiring in your company, you’d probably uncover two key culprits:
- Recruiters and hiring managers who aren’t on the same page about what makes a good cultural match.
- An over-reliance on ineffective devices such as resumes or interviews, which are unable to assess job candidates for various cultural fit features effectively.
Both of these issues are solved by cultural fit assessments.
To begin, these technologies need businesses to focus internally and have current employees from various teams complete the assessment. Some assessments will ask employees about their sentiments or preferences at work, while others would put them in hypothetical circumstances and ask them to determine how they would respond.
The software then does the grunt work of quantifying your culture based on these comments in response, making it clear to everyone involved in the hiring process what cultural fit means for different teams in your company.
The same assessment is given to all job applicants. Their scores are compared to those of the team they applied to see how closely they match.
Approximately 20% of employees quit their jobs within the first forty-five days. There are a variety of causes behind this, ranging from a lack of affirmation from their manager to a lack of team fit. After you’ve hired personnel who will fit into the culture, you’ll need to provide them with suitable guidance and leadership.
“The idea here is to provide your new hire with an experience that is consistent with your company culture,” Lee-Anne, CEO and founder of OneinaMil, adds. She adds that it may seem strange to use technology to hire for cultural fit, but it’s your best bet for removing uncertainty from the process.
These tools not only provide better comparisons of your new candidates but also help you quantify and visualize cultural fit in a standardized way, making hiring decisions easier.
2. Predictive Hiring Tools Make Data-Driven Cultural Fit Recommendations
Although you can’t immediately judge whether your employment decisions will work out, predictive hiring solutions can help you get close.
A June 2013 Gallup poll of more than 150,000 U.S. workers found that a stunning 70 percent of respondents either loathed their employment or felt disengaged, and among the main reasons listed were “poor management” and “poor cultural fit” were at the top of the list.
According to Sean Storin, CEO and co-founder of One Degree, these data help solve the astonishing number of disastrous hires by attempting to find better employees based on corporate culture, mission, and core values.
Investing in a data-driven approach for hiring using predictive hiring technologies will leverage your hiring game by collecting as much information about current and former employees as feasible.
These data points can come from a variety of sources, including resumes and cultural fit assessments, as well as:
- Profiles on social media
- Blogs
- Contributions to internet forums by professionals
- Your performance management or HRIS system
The data is then run through a predictive analytics model to see which data points best correspond with employee success (most often pinned to retention).
As several models are deployed, and more data is acquired to assess each model’s correctness, this stage can take some time.
The predictive hiring platform may then evaluate the same data points from job applicants and automatically rank the best prospects based on their potential to succeed after an accurate model has been found.
Do these systems need a lot of data to generate reliable predictions? Yes. If you’re not careful, they could be just as biased in their hiring decisions as humans. Yes, as well.
On the other hand, predictive hiring systems offer a marriage of AI and data science that, when used appropriately, may dramatically enhance cultural fit hiring outcomes over time.
3. Employee Referral Portals Give Your Culture Captains More Authority
Employee referrals have repeatedly proven to be the most acceptable source for quality hires. After all, who better to know who would prosper and fit in at your company than your employees?
The only issue is that only around half of all employees take part in employee recommendation programs. If this sounds like your company, update to a recruiting system with an employee referral gateway instead of depending on errant emails or bulletin boards to remind existing employees to suggest friends and colleagues.
Recruiters can use these systems to set monetary referral rewards for certain positions, depending on the scarcity of talent for the function or the urgency with which the job must be filled.
Employees can then view these reward amounts by logging into the portal. If an employee’s referral is recruited and stays for a set period of time, that employee receives a bonus.
Employees may also check the status of their referrals and share job descriptions on social media using the platform, which encourages employee participation.
Employee-facing portals are becoming more widespread in recruiting systems. They serve a dual purpose: they make it easier for employees to refer others while also making it easier for HR to design, track, and distribute referral benefits. They’re critical to hiring for cultural fit.
Recruiting software systems rapidly deliver the technology needed to aid in cultural fit hiring decisions, with features such as cultural fit evaluations, predictive hiring capabilities, and employee referral portals.
Uncertainty comes with change. Are interviews obsolete? Is a candidate’s gut instinct useless? The answer is no to both queries. These tools are aimed to supplement rather than replace your existing processes. Finally, your employment selection should be based on human factors.
It may seem counterintuitive to use technology to hire for cultural fit, but it’s your best bet for removing uncertainty from the process.
To know more about how exceptional technological innovations can help HR leaders optimize the interview process and hiring to boost their company’s values, contact Recruiter.com . The experienced team here will do its best to provide you with recommendations for a recruitment strategy to help you hire people who align with your company values.
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