Friendly Biz | whybegee | Yoav B. Guttman

My current job has allowed me to become quite the expert in different facets of recruiting and technology. My latest post, originally appearing here, is my take on cultural fit, hiring, and how to communicate those expectations…….

4 Ways To Hire For Cultural Fit

One of the things most important in the hiring process is whether or not a prospective hire will be a good cultural fit. It is also one of the most difficult things to measure and predict. But there are certainly some steps any good hiring manager can take to make a new hire as close to a perfect cultural fit as possible.

It All Starts With The Job Description

Believe it or not, like so much about hiring, the first step to finding cultural fit is in the job description itself. Not only does a well-written and accurate job description set expectations of the kinds of work a new hire will be doing, but it can also communicate a certain tone that can shape a candidate’s expectation of corporate culture. Does your company offer free lunch everyday? Do you do happy hours? Is travel or work outside regular business hours required?

All these set up a job seeker for a good culture fit – and weed out bad ones. Furthermore, for a recruiter or talent acquisition professional who needs to find a candidate for a different hiring manager in the company, getting together on the details of the job description, tasks of the team, and even certain tools used all communicate cultural aspects of the company and job to a job seeker.

HR Bartender Sharlyn Lauby presents “The 3 Essential Components to Hiring for Cultural Fit” Webinar on March 15th, 2016.

A Good Match Leads To A Good Culture

Once you have a good job description, another step in ensuring a good cultural fit is finding a good match. While there are many ways to advertise your job across the web, there is really only one quality job board (ahem, ahem) that ranks and delivers qualified prospects to employers directly. If you think about it, it makes sense that someone who is a bad fit for a job will be a bad fit culturally.

That person may not be able to meet performance expectations. This creates stress on the rest of the team, who may have to pick up the slack. This then snowballs very quickly. At the end of the day, this snowball started by hiring someone who just was not a good qualified candidate.

Leadership Begets Culture Begets Leadership

When you get into the meat of the interview process is where you can really tell if someone will be a good fit or not. Any company wants self-starters and creative thinkers, even if you are just filling data entry positions. This is because these characteristics illustrate passion and leadership. While a prospective hire might have these attributes, it is also important to communicate how the company will foster these talents, thereby creating a positive cultural environment.

HR expert Sharlyn Lauby aka HR Bartender says, “Organizations need to take an active role in creating their leaders. It doesn’t seem practical to assume that one activity alone can prepare future leaders.” So while it is key to make sure that new hires will be good cultural fits, it is just as important for HR to stress the importance of creating a positive culture, and specifically one that fosters leadership.

Your first performance review question: Do you like me?

Another way to make sure that a job candidate will be a good cultural fit is to learn about his or her preferred management style and if that runs parallel to the manager’s style. While similar to and certainly an off shoot of leadership, management style can make or break a team – or even company culture. Does the hiring manager want to be involved in every decision or is he/she ok with delegating responsibility and decision making? Does the candidate prefer to work alone or in teams? How does he/she deal with self-management? Or does the job seeker prefer more of an interventionist as a manager?

Lauby says that finding this out might “sound like a no-brainer but, in the workplace, layers of bureaucracy have created cultures where employees have to go to a manager to solve a problem or to resolve a conflict.” While one assumes the current digital revolution the workplace is undergoing would suggest that most employee-employer relationships are better off in more of a self-managed style, it is important to communicate between the job seeker and the hiring manager what the management style expectations are.

The 3 Essential Components

There is much more to finding a good cultural fit but these are just a few that I have picked up upon. The HR Bartender will be leading a webinar, sponsored by RealMatch, called “The 3 Essential Components to Hiring for Cultural Fit” on March 15^th, 2016, where she will go much more into depth on her opinions and strategies – plus get 1 HRCI Credit for attending! If you want to learn more on this issue, you have to register!

In this new series called Friendly Biz, I will be highlighting the new companies of young entrepreneurs. Many are close friends and they are doing amazing work. I leveraged my friendship with them to write about them and learn what it takes to launch a business in 2014 as a young entrepreneur.

Jared Olkin, Founder of Revolution Gelato

If you think Ben & Jerry changed the ice cream game, you’d be right. They did and that’s obvious.

But the game didn’t stop changing with Benjamin and Jerrold. 2014 brings a new player to the scene. But the scene now is more niche, more specific, and more health-friendly.

Enter Revolution Gelato.

CEO and Founder (and close friend) Jared Olkin communicated with me about the challenges, successes, and joys of creating his own company, being his own boss, and adhering to a lifestyle ideology in cohesion with delicious dessert.

Jared Olkin, raised in North Carolina, started tinkering around with gelato around 2010. At first, creating gelato recipes started to “solve a personal need,” says Olkin, but quickly “morphed into the idea for a company that same year.” A year later, in 2011, Olkin shared his gelato at a public event in Atlanta for the first time. Ever since, the reaction of tasters has been incredibly positive.

“I’m proudest every time I get to see someone try my gelato for the first time,” Olkin says. “The reactions stick with me. More than once I’ve had people turn and start to walk away only to literally stop in their tracks after they take the first bite. I mean, who’s ever heard of gelato stopping forward motion?”

But the reaction and the story don’t just end there. Revolution Gelato is more than just a tasty treat.

The company is “part of a larger movement of people who are changing the status quo when it comes to food and values.” For this company, their contribution is a specifically premium dairy-free gelato. Hippy and health nuts alike can get on board with this. Olkin suggests that part of the appeal to Revolution Gelato specifically is its values. He believes that in 2014, consumers care more about what they are putting in their bodies and that his company is one that reflects an ideology of “caring for our body, society, and world.”

It is immediately clear when talking to Olkin that Revolution Gelato is not just another dessert in the freezer section of the grocery store. Instead, it is the “premium” experience of the ice cream or gelato world in the health conscious consumer world. That means less processed foods, and in this case, no dairy.

Beyond all this is a story about a young entrepreneur.

Yes, the gelato is tasty and the mission is lovely as well. But, at the end of the day, I have chosen to highlight this business as part of the Friendly Biz series because it is about a young entrepreneur launching his own business. Perhaps due to his focus on his product or maybe perhaps my questions, Olkin’s own self-reflection on his entrepreneurship is not self-aggrandizing.

Olkin says of starting his own business, “I’d always been attracted to entrepreneurship from a young age. I liked the idea of creating something and watching it grow, as well as being my own boss. I’ve also come to understand that it is a fantastic means to understand oneself more fully. Probably the most compelling reason for me is the unparalleled learning opportunity. Regardless of the outcome of the venture, you walk away with a wealth of experience and growth.”

While it may be difficult to get your hands on Revolution Gelato right at this moment, you can be sure you know when it is available to the public. Olkin suggested that this was in the near future, with orders coming from the website very soon. To find out more, check out their online locations: