Build the best team
To perpetuate your culture, you need people who can help you perpetuate the culture, particularly as your company grows and expands its work force.
That means new hires have to fit with your company’s mission and values as much as they need to fit the listed job description.
Baiada says a lot of leaders fall into the rut of hiring specifically based on the physical needs of the job. That is a definite element of the recruiting and hiring process, but it can’t end there.
“A lot of companies will look for a specific talent, because the job is written that way,” Baiada says. “You need an accountant, you need a recruiter, you need someone with a specific skill set. Hiring can be very skill- and task-based. But you also need them to connect with your purpose as a company. When you are building and maintaining a culture, it’s not enough to just hire someone with a skill. If a new hire doesn’t connect with our purpose here at Bayada, we’re not going to send them into someone’s house. If they don’t connect with our values, why would our clients want them?”
Baiada says you should screen for values and train for skills. A person’s values have usually been ingrained by the time that person arrives in your office for an interview. Even if you’d like the candidate to have an extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of the job, you can still cover that in training. A poor cultural match, on the other hand, almost always equals a poor hire.
“You can train for skills, but you screen for values and then reinforce them,” he says. “They know and can see that we’re living our values. But we’re not going to be transformational. If a person doesn’t have a big heart, if they don’t think it’s that important to show up for work on time, they’re really not going to be our kind of person.
“As far as what we look for in a new hire, each of the categories is a necessary component, but they’re not sufficient independently. You have to have compassion, you have to learn excellence at the skill aspect of the job, and you have to demonstrate it reliably so people know that you can be counted on. It’s like a stool. If you have a missing leg, it won’t stand.”
