The Secret to Create a Good Corporate Culture

We’ve all been there.  A resumé, or CV, hits your desk and it reads like a best seller, the perfect person for creating a good corporate culture.  You think, you have to have this person on your team!  You fast track or short-circuit the interview process.  Hire and on board the candidate, and promote him/her like he/she is the second coming.  And then… he/she turns out to be a complete and total disaster (I was going to say “Asshole,” except I am too polite).

What went wrong?  On paper, this was the best thing ever.  People like this NEVER come along!

Well first of all, I never hire for skills.  I have been burned too many times by those with impressive resumés that included graduating at the top of their class from the world’s best schools (I once worked with a person that said she had a PhD from the world’s top business school – she was an asshole and she destroyed millions of dollars in shareholder value).

I hire for behavior alignment and attitude, train for skills. And… I fire quickly for lack of fit with the culture.

Hiring Rock Stars

How do you hire for behaviors and attitude?  Here’s my checklist:

1. Throw away your current paradigm for hiring and assessing. Most organizations do a series of cross-functional interviews.  The mistake they make is that they never check-in with each other to compare what questions they are going to ask.  Most interviewers are lazy and download a bunch of questions from the internet – the same questions candidates are downloading.  Then the interviewing groups never debrief with each other to compare notes.
2. Go ‘outside’ the norm.  In fact, go outside.  I recommend interviewing candidates in environments that they would NEVER be prepared for.  I have interviewed people in the food courts of very busy shopping malls, in the stairwell during a fire-drill, out walking the street in a rain storm (without an umbrella for the candidate), etc.  Going outside the norm, stresses a candidate out and when stressed out, we humans show our true attitude, values and belief system.  One organization I know asks candidates to come for an interview dressed formally on their top-half and in beach-wear for the bottom half.  Another organization I have worked with, brings all candidates in together and has them interview each other.
3. Ask whacky questions. Such as…
   1. “Can you please describe the color ‘yellow’ to a blind person?”
   2. “How many windows are there in New York?”
   3. “You have to get rid of one state in the U.S. Which one and why?”

** Send me an email and I will send you my extensive list of weird and whacky interview questions!

Good Corporate Culture

Why departure from the normal process?  Simple.  You want to build a team of people that believe the same things that your organization does and create a good corporate culture.  When you have that kind of alignment, magical things happen.  Team engagement soars.  Revenue, productivity and customer satisfaction increases.  Costs actually decrease.

Or you can continue to hire assholes.

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, and International Keynote Speaker. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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