Coolblue culture made measurable
The cultural fit, the extent to which an employee fits into the culture of an organization, is an increasingly important aspect when recruiting and selecting employees. But how do you actually determine whether someone fits the organizational culture and can perform and thrive within it? A customized assessment then offers a solution.
The importance of cultural fit
90% of all hiring managers in the United States and Canada consider the cultural fit between a candidate and the organization at least as important as the skills and skills that person brings. The well-known American HR consulting firm Robert Hall asked it in a recent research to nearly 7,000 senior managers in North America. At the same time, recruiters notice that candidates themselves are also paying more and more attention to that fit.
Chuck Edwards, responsible for global talent acquisition at Microsoft worldwide, describes it as follows in the study: “Organizational culture is the new currency for hiring and retention.” According to him, organizational culture is a much better way to distinguish yourself from potential employees than salary and other employment conditions. And vice versa, the costs of an employee who is not suitable afterwards are much higher than the training costs to teach someone some extra skills.
But how do you determine that cultural fit?
This is not easy for both parties. It is often difficult for candidates to get a clear picture of a company culture. And for employers, the extent to which someone will fit into a certain company culture is difficult to predict.
To start with the first, a compelling description of the company culture is not enough to convince candidates. And having your own coffee bar with trendy seats is creative, but does the company really do anything with the ideas behind an Espresso Macchiato? Recruiters are therefore being questioned critically today. From “Tell me one thing you would have wanted to know before you started working here yourself?” to “What happened to the person who had this position before me?”
It is almost even more difficult for the organization to objectively determine whether a candidate is a good fit. Contrary to what is sometimes suggested, the role of a cultural fit in recruitment and selection is really not new. However, this question was not really explored before and it was often just intuition. But an analysis in the category “A good guy, fits the tent perfectly” is no longer enough in 2019. We actually want to get a lot deeper under someone's skin. We look for real motives, what really motivates him or her and gives them a flow. Then standard interview questions and tests are no longer sufficient, but more is needed.
A practical example at Coolblue
Let's make that concrete with an example. Our customer Coolblue has a clear identity and culture that focuses on friendship between employees, mutual trust and a lot of personal responsibility. People are actively looking for colleagues who feel comfortable in such an environment and who contribute to maintaining and strengthening it. In order to evaluate candidates as objectively as possible, Ixly developed a recruitment kit for Coolblue. The kit makes it measurable whether a candidate really fits the Coolblue culture. They also get a clear insight into the candidate's potential for a position within the company.
At Ixly, we develop such customized recruitment kits by supplementing our standard tests — such as the Work-Related Personality Questionnaire and Adaptive Capacity Test — with customized assessments. Tests that specifically focus on the properties that match the culture of the customer organization. Where the trick is to organize the tests in such a way that you look for joining at an organization, without looking for uniformity. After all, people can fit in with the organization in many ways. We are emphatically not looking for a standard template that every candidate should fit into.
