Aligning Interview Processes with Culture and Mission

Culture and mission ability vs job task ability.

We should spend just as much time, if not more time, on assessing the ability to contribute to and adapt to culture and mission as we spend on the ability to complete job tasks.

The National Association for Colleges and Employers (NACE) explains that employers are looking for certain workplace competencies Workplace competencies are one place to start assessing skills.

Employers also need technical (hard skills). I hire talent in my current role and did so in industry as well. I can train someone on technical gaps and am willing and excited to do so. However, I expect a new team member to exhibit the workplace competencies. Without them, workplace culture can be damaged and that creates a lot of other issues.

Of course, offering professional development is critical in my organization. Opportunities to develop both technical skills and workplace competencies will always be afforded. However, if I could choose, I would rather train less on workplace competencies and more on technical ability.

So, what are the expectations related to what skill areas should need training, what skill areas we will not train, and what broad skills and competencies we expect a new hire to have already:

• Workplace competencies – expect them to have already and expect to provide opportunities to develop even more
• Hard Skills – have to an extent, but expect to do quite a bit of training here
• Alignment with workplace culture and mission – Non-Negotiable. Can share expectations, but this MUST fit. Training on expectations will happen, but aligning with them is more of an internal, natural ability than training or expecting someone to have already. It is complicated for sure.

So, how do we shift from spending so much precious time during interviews exploring the capability to do the job functions to more time on culture and mission ability?

Making the shift from job responsibilities interviewing to culture and mission-based interviewing

1. Use whatever format works for you to list the culture statements you will map to your interview questions.
2. Review your typical interview questions and see if you can map them to a culture statement.
3. Any questions not mapped to a culture statement go in a parking lot for now.
4. Assess if you have good questions addressing at depth each of your culture statements. If not, develop some and get some feedback on them.
5. Parking lot questions: These may have a place after asking yourself, “What do you do with these answers? Are the questions relevant? Do they add value to getting to know someone and their skills in relation to what you do not already know?”

Prepare the candidate for what they will experience. Tell them most of the discussion (Right? An interview should be a discussion, not a listing of questions) will be related to workplace culture because, without that, we have nothing.

That statement alone will peak a great candidate’s interest in joining your team.

Here are just a few examples to get you started. These map to our culture and mission statements:

Taking Responsibility – Accountability

• Describe the biggest setback you’ve dealt with. What was your response?
• Tell me about a time when you took responsibility for a failure.
• Tell me about a time when you failed to meet a commitment you had made.

Getting behind our mission

• How do you see yourself supporting our mission to connect, integrate and empower

 Working with data

• Can you describe a project you worked on that involved data in some capacity?
• What challenges have you encountered while working with data on a project?

Student Development focused

• What would your approach be to working with a student who has no clue what they want to do when they graduate?

Team Focused

• How do you rely on others to make you better?
• Describe an enjoyable team experience. What did you like about it?
• What aspects of teamwork do you find challenging?

Assessment of work

• How do you measure the impact of your work?
• What are assessments you’ve developed to show accountability for successful work performance?

Kudos to Brandon for making these changes and influencing, even more, our workplace culture through hiring right.

One last note before moving on. I was recently at a Moth event where people stand up and tell engaging stories. It was a great event hosted by great people. While there, I was talking with an involved student. He said one of his favorite interview questions is, “When was the last time you asked WHY?”.  I learn so much from talking with students.

Brandon, we need to add that question….I want people asking why.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this in the LinkedIn feed or in comments below.

REFLECTION:

What are your thoughts about aligning interviews with workplace culture and mission vs job function?