The Importance of Company Culture in Your 2019 Job Search

Good morning. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another episode of Green Apple Slices. Every Monday we talk through an article online about culture, employee engagement, and just making the workplace a better place to be. I couldn’t do it on my own because no one would listen, so I always call Rachel Fisch, Accountants and Alliances for Sage Canada.

Rachel: How are you doing?

John: Doing great, doing great. Yeah, another good week here, so it’s going to be awesome. I found this article on a greatresumesfast.com. It was just The Importance of Company Culture in Your 2019 Job Search.

Rachel: Yes. We haven’t really done what — like we’ve done in your current job, but I don’t think we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the actual search process.

John: Right and from both perspectives of what our companies and firms hiring and what should they be looking for when they’re hiring. The other side is if you’re a job candidate, what should you be looking for in the organization to make sure that this is a place that you should be?

Rachel: Yeah, because I think we’ve definitely gone from — I mean, it feels like when you would go into an interview, it was the company interviewing the employee, and they ask a bunch of questions, get a bunch of answers, and that was it.

John: Right. What kind of tree would you be? What’s your biggest mistake? Not having an answer to that question, does that count?

Rachel: But it really feels like employees are taking ownership and maybe the lead on making sure that the company is right for them. So it’s definitely a shift that you’re seeing in the hiring process for sure.

John: Right, right. Robert Half did a survey. I know we’ve talked about it before just from a different angle, but as a refresher for people, that 35% of jobseekers would not take a job where they weren’t a good fit for the company culture even if that job was the perfect position professionally, which I think is huge. People care.

Rachel: Absolutely. That never would have been the case. It would have been, okay, so the boss is kind of a jerk, but, look, it’s the job you want, take it. That conversation just wasn’t happening.

John: Right, it wasn’t happening at all and now it’s happening over a third of the time which is interesting. One of the other stats that they had here was 91% of managers that were surveyed said that a company culture fit is just as, or more important, than a skills fit.

Rachel: I think you had some opinions about this stuff.

John: I think that that’s interesting that someone would answer that on a survey, but I’m not totally sure if that’s actually the case in real life, in the real world. I think that there are plenty of people that are hiring people, even if they aren’t a perfect culture fit just because maybe they really, really need somebody. Busy season is approaching type of a thing, we need to just fill in some gaps and let’s just hope it doesn’t suck type of a thing. But 91%, that seems a little higher than what’s happening in the real world, I would think, but it’s a good effort, I guess.

Rachel: A for effort. So here’s what I think. Ninety-one percent does seem extremely high because you have to consider that those 91% not only realize that, yes, it’s just as, or more important, but they have to be aware that they have a culture and be able to align it through an interview process with the candidate. And to me, we are so not there yet when it comes to even professionals being aware of the culture within their own organization. I don’t even think 91% of people do that.

So I feel like people answered it like this because they felt it was the right answer. So they answered this on principle. However, I still think we have a long way to go to acknowledge the culture that’s in your organization or work proactively and intentionally to change it to what you want it to be and then to be able to recognize it within candidates. I think we just got a long way to go.

John: Yeah, absolutely. But it, at least, creates the awareness and drops the seed in people’s heads that if you’re an organization that’s looking to attract and retain top talent, you need to be able to describe your culture and then you need to be able to take a step back even before that is to build the culture with intention that you want to be able to describe to the people that you’re trying to attract and retain.

Rachel: Right. But also if you describe an amazing culture and then the candidate begins, the role starts with the promise of this amazing culture and you don’t have it like on the first day. I may have had a similar situation where it’s like you can’t hire somebody based on promises, not my current employer. I love Sage. They’re awesome.

John: It was when you were with Fisch Books, wasn’t it? Your own firm.

Rachel: Because when you hire them, when they get into your organization, they will realize that everything you said about your organization in the interview process was false. So what I really like is when it comes down to the section, how can I figure out a company’s culture, right? So if you are a candidate looking for a job and they’re saying how important culture is for you to accept this role, what are some of the clues on the company’s culture that you can get within that application process? So they’ve got some good tips here.

John: Yeah, absolutely. You can check out the article at greenapplepodcast.com and read through everything there from both perspectives, as a hiring person or as a job candidate. A lot of great tips there. While you’re on that page, there’s a big green button there to do a survey. It’s totally anonymous about corporate culture and how the Green Apple message might apply in your world. So it’d be super awesome if you could just take 60 seconds to do that. That would be really cool. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and hit Subscribe so you don’t miss any of the future episodes.

So with that said, I hope everyone has a great rest of the week. We’ll talk to you then. Rachel, have a good one.

Rachel: You too, John. Talk to you next week.