“They were not the right fit… They wouldn’t fit into our culture…blah blah blah.”
We often hear people say this is a nonsense reason for rejecting a candidate.
We disagree.
It’s the gut feeling; it’s the niggling doubt; it’s that voice in the back of your head that says ‘no’, but you don’t know why!
Perfect on paper is not good enough; it’s not where recruitment should start, or finish.
Once you know why someone wasn’t a cultural fit, it’s liberating… That gut feeling becomes something more substantial.
It’s a surprisingly simple process to clarify exactly what your company culture is. It’s understanding your hierarchy of core values and sticking to them. Just because your top core value may be ‘x’, it doesn’t mean ‘y’ is wrong; it’s just not the right fit for you.
The problem comes when a business can’t agree on its core values – or hasn’t decided what they are.
Company culture lasts for a long time, but personalities within a company are fluid.
Hiring different people, with different personalities, is a vital and healthy practice for a company – but character and culture needs to be defined.
It’s the difference between style and substance.
A personality is entirely different to character. Character is culture. Culture is king.
