AT A TIME when corporate Australia and the public in general is placing greater emphasis on the importance of ethics and values, a recent report has found that most organisations are struggling to make good cultural judgements during the recruitment process
AT A TIME when corporate Australiaand the public in general is placing greater emphasis on the importance of ethics and values, a recent report has found that most organisations are struggling to make good cultural judgements during the recruitment process.
Based on a study of the practices of hiring managers in 200 Australian organisations, the report examined why issues of culture fit, considered a skill as important as experience and knowledge, are not being assessed with the same thoroughness.
While 90 per cent of companies recognise the importance of hiring for cultural fit, the Recruiting for Culture Fit study found that only 36 per cent do so with all hiring decisions. Time pressures and lack of available tools, skills and resources were cited as the top reasons for not properly assessing cultural fit.
“Ten years ago, technical skills and experience were the core prerequisites for a successful candidate,” said Bruce Watt, managing director of DDI Australia, which conducted the study.
“However, as the business environment changes and current skill sets quickly become redundant, cultural fit is now being recognised as critical. While an individual’s skills can and will continue to be developed, values are something that are very difficult to change.”
Nearly 50 per cent admitted that a reasonably, but not entirely, suitable candidate in relation to cultural fit was a better option than starting the whole recruitment process again.
“Clearly as the war for talent intensifies, and supply of good quality candidates tightens, the temptation for many organisations is to take the first available person rather than the best person for the job,” Watt said.
In 74 per cent of cases, he said that accurate employee decisions are being compromised by the hiring manager’s gut feeling, while 63 per cent are in too much of a hurry to adequately assess for culture and 50 per cent believe that tight labour markets force hiring managers to ignore culture fit during the recruitment process.
While a number of methods like behavioural interviews, panel interviews and reference checking are commonly used to determine culture fit, survey respondents offered a number of novel approaches.
Onsite visits, trial work periods and even pre-employment dinners were used to assess someone’s suitability for the organisation’s culture.
