Successful businesses understand the importance of alignment when it comes to brand-to-consumer dynamics. You don't want to target everyone.
Successful businesses understand the importance of alignment when it comes to brand-to-consumer dynamics. You don't want to target everyone.
You want to target people who will buy your product, love your product, and recommend your product. Ideal customers.
What about ideal employees? Prioritizing person-organization fit when making new hires will reduce turnover and improve productivity.
The new hire will be happier because they are working at a company that genuinely complements their personality. You will be happy because you have an employee who genuinely understands what you are trying to achieve.
Finding this fit is easier said than done. The eight strategies described below are proven and effective methods of maximizing retention and productivity through proper person-organization alignment.
It's relatively easy to find a good person-job fit. You simply need to understand what skills are needed. Then, you put out a well-detailed listing to recruit someone who has them.
You might spend months vetting candidates. However, the effort is at least linear. You know what needs to be done. You know what skills are required to accomplish it.
Person-organization fit is harder. It involves defining your company culture clearly.
Your listing still needs to reflect the skills required for the task. It also needs to draw in people with the right attitude. An ideal personality. Individuals who will quickly fit in with your business’s existing culture.
Even once you’ve done all that, you still aren’t finished. Next, you need to get good at identifying those qualities in your applicants. All of this takes time and effort. However, the results are more than worth it.
A good-fit hire will work harder, stick around longer, and contribute more efficiently to your business. Not only will they do what the job requires, but they will do it in a way that compliments your entire organization.
In the next few sections, we will take a detailed look at the following steps you can take to improve your hiring process:
Read on to learn more about implementing these strategies in your organization's hiring approach.
Understanding what your company is trying to accomplish and communicating it effectively are two different things. You probably have an intrinsic understanding of your work philosophy.
Putting those thoughts on paper is the challenge. Every job listing since the beginning of time has used words like "driven," "motivated," or "self-starter."
Maybe you want those qualities. Can you explain succinctly exactly how they should play out within your organization?
For this, AI can be a useful collaboration tool. If you are struggling to develop a clear idea of your company culture, talk it out with a trusted generative AI app.
It will be able to take the qualities you are looking for and articulate them in a way that is clear and actionable.
You probably won't want to copy and paste a ChatGPT-generated job listing directly into Indeed without any revision. However, it can be a great tool for shaping the direction of your language.
Once you've developed a clear understanding of your organization's culture and mission, you'll want to figure out how that should fit in with what you are looking for in a new hire.
This is a goal-setting step.
You're defining what you want out of future employee relationships. Without a clear objective and measurable success factors, person-to-organization fit is purely abstract.
Consider creating a detailed profile of your ideal employee that goes beyond technical qualifications. Include attitudes toward collaboration, problem-solving approaches, and communication preferences.
Identify specific behaviors that demonstrate alignment with your core values. For example, if innovation is central to your company, define what innovative thinking looks like in daily work.
Establish key performance indicators that measure cultural contributions alongside task completion. This makes the abstract concept of “fit” concrete and trackable.
Document these expectations clearly so they can be consistently applied by everyone involved in the hiring process. This creates alignment across departments and hiring managers.
A descriptive listing is your first point of contact with the potential hire. Doing it correctly will repel bad-fits and attract people who align with your company values.
Don't mince words. Be direct. Consider the ways that law firms often position their services.
On their blog pages, they will usually have a long list of questions that their potential clients might be asking. Is it illegal to sleep in your car in Texas? How much money can I get for an accident with an eighteen-wheeler? How long does it take to get a personal injury settlement in Kentucky?
They are equally direct on their homepage in what they try to leverage. Look at the homepage for the Baumgartner Law firm in Houston.
In bold letters, we see that they specialize in wrongful death. To the side, their chatbot pops up automatically to explain other practice areas.
The convenience of having that information available with a click immediately increases the chance of conversions while reducing unproductive consultations with people who will never become clients.
At a literal glance, potential clients can determine if they are a good fit for the firm or not. You should try for similar efficiency in your listing.
You aren't trying to maximize the number of applicants you get. You are trying to produce a refined list of high-quality applicants. People who understand exactly what working at your company will entail.
Include specific examples of how your values manifest in daily work. This helps candidates self-select based on genuine alignment rather than just skill matching.
At this point, you know what you want. You've explained what you want. Now, it is time to actively look for it in a real person.
When you interview candidates, incorporate your company culture into the conversation. It's very common for hiring managers to ask direct questions about a person's experience or education.
You can be equally upfront about culture-fit-related concerns. What are your professional ideals? What is your optimal work environment?
Listen carefully to these responses before revealing your company's values. This approach prevents candidates from simply mirroring what they think you want to hear.
Ask for specific examples of when they've thrived in previous work environments. Past behavior in similar cultural settings can be a strong predictor of future fit.
Pay attention to how candidates describe previous employers and colleagues. Their perspective on past work relationships often reveals their values and communication style.
Consider scenario-based questions that reveal how candidates might handle situations unique to your company culture. How would they react if a team project is running behind? What would they do to settle a professional disagreement with a coworker?
Feel free to get as specific as possible. Their answers may be very illuminating.
You need to be able to assign value metrics to candidate responses. If you were running an email marketing campaign, you would use clear milestones to track your progress.
You would want to know how many people are opening your emails. If you are sharing or requesting files with a client, you'd want to understand how successfully these exchanges were taking place.
If the results were less than ideal, you would refine the campaign until your goals are being met. So it is with interviewing candidates.
Create a standardized rubric that scores responses to culture-focused questions. This brings objectivity to what can otherwise be a subjective evaluation.
In the last heading, we suggested using scenario-based assessments. Ask the candidate how they would respond in specific situations. Measure their answer against your ideal reaction.
Of course, it would be difficult to assign their reactions an objective numerical value. You can evaluate based on alignment. Candidates with primarily ideal responses move on to the next stage of the process. Those who aren’t a good fit get passed on.
It can help to have multiple people review candidate responses. This will provide another layer of objectivity to the process.
Compare scores across candidates to establish benchmarks and patterns. This data becomes increasingly valuable as you refine your hiring process over time.
Track these metrics alongside job performance data after hiring. Do candidates who seem like good fits turn out to be effective? If not, why not? This allows you to constantly improve your assessment methods based on real outcomes.
Now that you have developed a process for understanding and refining employee-to-organization fit, consider using those metrics to perform an internal audit. Survey your employees.
Figure out how good the current fit is. This will give you a good idea of what can be done to improve productivity outside of making new hires. It will also help you identify your ideal baseline.
What qualities do your best employees have in common? You’ll want to look for those traits in all of your hires.
You can further audit your organization's employee-company fit standings by performing exit interviews with outgoing employees. Did the company culture influence their decision to leave?
Are there other factors that influence your retention? These conversations often reveal insights that current employees might be hesitant to share.
Think of person-organization fit as a constant, iterative process. Know your employees. Understand how they are responding to your culture and your policies.
Simply checking in with staff regularly can improve morale and potentially boost retention/productivity. More to the point, it will help you understand where you are at.
Is your culture aligned with your staff's personality? Regular conversations about this alignment create an environment where fit can be actively cultivated.
Developing your person-organization fit is a task for which there is no true end. For one thing, your staff will be in a constant state of flux. The bigger your company, the more often new people will be coming in and out.
These transitions are normal, but they require active consideration. You should always think, “How does this development impact my person-organization fit dynamic?”
But also understand that your company culture may evolve with time as well. You’ll understand things differently. Process your goals through a slightly different lens.
This is also normal, but it will require you to refine your hiring expectations regularly. By regularly evaluating your company’s mindset and the attitudes of your employees ,you can ensure that productivity, retention, and general workplace satisfaction are optimal.
Yes, maintaining this fit takes work. However, the results are well worth the effort.
