Define your values
On the recruiting end, the human resources staff at Philadelphia Insurance Cos. performs the common task of conducting multiple interviews with administrators from various departments, in addition to enlisting the help of a third-party firm, which employs proprietary personality profiling software to determine if a candidate is a good cultural match for the company.
But apart from that, Maguire and his staff take the extra step of allowing job candidates to conduct their own interviews. Candidates are encouraged to talk to current Philadelphia Insurance employees. Not only does it serve as a form of additional research on a given job candidate, it also allows the candidate to gain a much better mental picture of the company and a better idea of whether personal values mesh with corporate values.
“What we want is for our candidates to talk to employees in similar positions,” Maguire says. “We want them to get a clear idea of what the job entails, and we want them to see whether our current employees like their jobs. The personality profiles, the interviewing practices and the interaction with current employees are the three things that really help to ensure that we are getting the right people.”
You also need to manage the process by defining your company’s culture and core values.
On the cultural end, it needs to start at the bottom of the organization and flow upward. You can envision what you want your culture to embrace and start promoting that throughout your organization. But ultimately, your culture is what your employees live each day, not a set of rules and regulations that you disseminate from your office.
You have to achieve buy-in with your existing employees before you will be able to recruit additional high performers to your staff.
“A successful culture is one of the key ingredients to a successful company,” Maguire says. “You really have to do it from the ground up, not from the top down. That means the development of a winning culture has to happen in a consensual fashion. It has to mesh and resonate with everyone. What it can’t be is a top-down, ‘Here is what we’re going to do, here is our strategy,’ plan. It has to involve all of your employees, so there is buy-in.”