So how are we supposed to hire for culture and teach for skills again?

“Culture eats strategy for lunch” – these words uttered by the famous management consultant educator and author, Peter Drucker are the key to success.?And where most executives I meet nod sagely when they hear this, yet they do very little to hold up culture as the most important thing they can do for their organization. I think the most glaring area where this contradiction is seen is in another often used and largely ignored management philosophy – “hire for attitude and teach for skills.”

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The Changing World and Its Impact on Businesses

?We're in a new world full of changing attitudes, heightened complexity, and a rapidly evolving and shifting business environment. Our companies and coworkers are struggling under the weight of this tumult. Almost 30% of new hires leave their job within the first 90 days of starting because of a misalignment between the candidate and the culture of the organization they've joined. According to Gartner, 52% of workers are questioning the purpose of their jobs. Is it really possible to be as effective as we need to be to overcome the challenges we face with this level of uncertainty and lack of commitment? I'm pretty sure that it isn't.

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The Current Recruiting Process: A Focus on Skills

So, while we need to “hire for culture and teach for skills,” our current process of recruiting leaves very little room to do that. The fact is we use the simple process of buying stuff and we apply it to the immensely complex process of engaging with other human beings. In doing so, we start our recruiting process after we realize that we need to hire, which keeps us focusing exclusively on the people actively looking for the specific job we have in the moment we have an opening. It doesn't leave us with a lot of time, so we focus on what's easiest to identify – skills.

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The job postings: They might mention culture, but not as a requirement. They ask for a resume – a document that exclusively details skills and experience and is highly subjective at that.

The application process: Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) review resumes first and weed out 90% of them. The criteria that ATS systems use are exclusively skill and experience based.

A Shift in the Recruiting Process: Hiring for Culture First

?To hire for culture and teach for skills, we need to completely shift the process we use to connect with our most important resource – our people. The stakes of getting this right are more important than ever: a study by the McKinsey Global Institute revealed that companies that focus on providing a good environment for their people and emphasize performance have more than double the profits of those who lack such cultural influence.

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Steps to Hire for Culture and Teach for Skills

1. ?Uncover and clearly articulate core purpose and values.
2. Identify the narrative themes that come from purpose and values.
3. Get a volunteer group of engaged employees (employee ambassadors) to be trained in the strategies of social selling and to post on LinkedIn about the narrative themes that come from purpose and values.
4. Work with employee ambassadors to bring engagement to direct conversation, looking for people who share your culture and values and have the required skills.

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Conclusion: Embrace a New Approach to Recruiting

Reportedly, Einstein said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We've been using the same tired and ineffective method of recruiting for a long time now. If we want different results, we need to do something new and different. Questions about how you can accomplish this? Send me a message; I’m always happy to talk.

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About the author - Peter Laughter – I walked away from a 25 year entrepreneurial career in the recruiting and staffing industry because recruiting is screwed. I founded True Bearing to reinventing recruiting using purpose, values, and storytelling as the currency companies can use to supercharge referrals and cultivate pipelines of rockstar talent.??