Finding Team Players and Cultural Fits

• 00:04 How do you know if this job applicant is really going to fit in with your
• 00:09 organization?
• 00:10 You've got to really listen to what they say.
• 00:12 You can't just say, are you a lone ranger, or do you work well with a team?
• 00:16 Do you play well with others?
• 00:17 Because everyone will say the right thing.
• 00:20 But when you're asking them to talk about some of their greatest accomplishments,
• 00:24 what are they proud of.
• 00:25 If everything is I, I, I, I single handedly did this,
• 00:29 I worked longer than anyone else, that might be a danger sign.
• 00:33 What you're probably listening for is, well, my team and I, we did this.
• 00:38 Together, our team got this product to market sooner than anyone else.
• 00:42 When you hear people talk about how enthusiastic they were
• 00:45 to work with a great team of people for a collective accomplishment.
• 00:49 That's typically the best thing you want to hear
• 00:53 if people in your organization work as a team.
• 00:56 Now, every organization is different.
• 00:59 So, for example, there are still plenty of law firms that are very siloed.
• 01:03 And it really is about each individual billing the most number of hours.
• 01:07 So if someone says, hey, I'm kind of a loner, but
• 01:11 I am willing to work 20 hours a day, and I really sit in my seat, and I plow.
• 01:15 That person might be a good fit for certain law firms, but
• 01:19 might be an awful fit for your organization.
• 01:22 So you've really gotta listen to how they describe their accomplishments.
• 01:27 Do they really talk about it in terms of working with a group, or as an individual?
• 01:32 That's going to tell you a great deal as to whether they were going to fit in to
• 01:36 your organization.
• 01:38 So how do you tell if a job applicant is a good cultural fit for your organization?
• 01:44 Now, this is a tricky thing,
• 01:46 because culture is quite often just things we do that we think are common
• 01:50 sense that everyone does, that aren't necessarily common sense.
• 01:54 So it can be tricky.
• 01:56 Some things are highly, highly relevant, as far as work ethic.
• 02:01 So if everyone in your organization, for example,
• 02:04 a lot of Wall Street firms, arrives at their desk no later than 6:30 AM.
• 02:09 And you're interviewing someone who talks about what a late night owl he is,
• 02:14 or she is.
• 02:15 And how much he loved his last job because it didn't start till 10 AM,
• 02:20 that may tell you there's not going to be a good cultural fit.
• 02:24 But be careful, quite often you have a situation where two founders have known
• 02:28 each other since college.
• 02:30 They were both on the college lacrosse team.
• 02:33 And before you know it, they hire people,
• 02:36 where they feel there's a good cultural fit.
• 02:39 And you look around, and you've got a company of 100 people.
• 02:42 And every single person is a white male Catholic from either Long Island or
• 02:47 Maryland.
• 02:48 Yeah, there's a cultural fit, but everybody's the same.
• 02:52 And a whole lot of highly qualified people have been essentially discriminated
• 02:57 against in a way that no one was even aware of.
• 03:00 So you got to be really aware of the culture of your organization,
• 03:05 the things that help, and are going to make things useful,
• 03:10 versus things that are just arbitrary and discriminatory.

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