Values-based recruitment
When was the last time you thought about the values of your organisation? Are they written on a wall you pass by every day? Are they the background image on your desktop? Are they in your email signature? Or are those words just words and what’s really important is the way people act day-to-day and the way the organisation makes you feel?
If you have read my book or heard me present, you know I’m pretty passionate about your values aligning with the company you work for. And not just the aspirational values but the ones that really hit you in the face. A company doesn’t have values. People do. And it doesn’t matter how much you try, if you’re not on that bus, your workplace can feel like a foreign country.
In the work that I do, I immerse myself in the culture of an organisation in order to help me recruit. I’m not a recruiter by trade, I’m a security leader. But I’ve got a passion for finding the right roles for the right security leaders. To do this, I spend several months meeting stakeholders within my client’s organisation and getting a feel for the values of the business. This also gives me a glimpse into the way people are living the values (how they act when they think no one is watching) and recently one organisation has struck a chord with me.
After three and a half great years, it would take something pretty special for me to give up my business. But recently I walked into a new client and from the moment I got there I felt a level of comfort and inclusion I’ve not experienced before. And that feeling has grown over the days and weeks since. Everyone I have met works there because they love the organisation, they love the people, they are committed to the vision (which gets talked about in almost every meeting) and their personal purpose in life aligns with that of the organisation. As someone with the role of recruiting the right leader for this business, I could never have known the true values of the employee community without working there myself. And after a few short weeks, I was thinking – yep I could see myself staying here.
I know not every employee would say they work there for these reasons. Some people like just like working in sales or in accounting or may have followed a previous boss there. But the overwhelming majority of people are there - not because of the words on the wall - but because of the way the business makes them feel. When I’m part of that community a few days a week, I feel like even if I had a tough day, the values of the people I work with would keep me coming back.
When you’re interviewing candidates, how do you give yourself the confidence that their values and that of your organisation are aligned?