Insight Blog

In a previous post, Top Reasons Why New Hires Fail & What To Learn From Them, Helbling discussed the importance of assessing a potential employee's attitude before actually hiring them. Of course, technical aptitude and appropriate experience are essential for a new hire's ability to perform in a role, but what makes a new hire a great fit and increases their chances of excelling is their attitudinal match with an organization's culture. By giving the appropriate consideration to a candidate's attitude and cultural fit, an organization can improve its employee selection process and hire more individuals who have the potential to become high performers.

Candidate characteristics that determine a cultural fit include many dimensions such as:

• Work style

• Temperament

• Professional motivation

• Personal and professional characteristics

• Attitude fit with their direct report and with the entity's overall environment, values and its way of doing business

Only by having a strong match between these factors will a candidate have the ability and opportunity to significantly strengthen and impact an organization and succeed within its culture as well as to enhance their own careers.

Jim Lord, Managing Director at Helbling & Associates, says "at a certain level of position, most people are high performing and diligent workers so it is their attitude and cultural fit that make them successful. A bad cultural fit can actually make great people underperform. Just look at the numbers of CEOs who fail within one or two years. At that level, the technical abilities are a given and it is the attitudinal fit that makes it work."

Wes Miller, Managing Consultant with Helbling, explains, "new skills and techniques can be taught but it is nearly impossible to train someone on attitude and culture. This is especially true if the professional has ten or more years of experience as younger professionals are more moldable in both attributes."

Both search consultants agree that hiring managers are not the only ones who understand the impact of a strong cultural fit as high-caliber professionals are aware of its importance as well. These upper-tier candidates do not look for an average job. They seek a role within an organization where the culture matches their personality, enhancing their opportunity to become a high performer and thrive within its structure and environment. Before accepting a new position, they have to feel an attraction to the company's culture and they want to understand what differentiates the company's low performers from its high performers. All candidates who are highly motivated in their professions want to be in an environment where they can grow and can contribute their ideas to assist in the company's success.

Therefore, candidates and companies need to understand the impact of a strong cultural fit as well as the consequences of a poor one.

Results of a strong cultural fit:

• Smoother transition
• Reduced time to productivity
• Increased engagement
• Enhanced opportunity to become a high performer
• Lengthened tenure

Results of a poor cultural fit:

• Longer, difficult transition
• Delayed time to actual productivity
• Decreased engagement
• Limited opportunity to become a high performer
• Shortened tenure
• Potential to cause serious issues and challenges for both candidate and company, especially when the individual is in a senior executive position.

Stay tuned to our blog over the next couple of months for cultural case studies prepared by our consultants. These particular executive search case studies will highlight the challenges that our clients were contending with, their objectives of securing ideal professionals and how finding candidates whose attitudes matched their organizational cultures made all the difference.