The Culture Equation – The Right Fit for You (Part 3)
By Fred Coon and Steve Mulligan

This is the third part of a three part series on making sure you are a cultural fit in an organization that you are contemplating joining. The first part was on self assessment – to be clear with your self what is important to you. The second part was on the behavioral interview which is used by many organizations to see if you would fit in their culture. This part will address how you can determine what the culture is for yourself during the interview process.

At the start of any interview, you should always ask permission to ask questions and take notes. The interview is really a two-way process. You need to find out as much about them as they do about you. Asking questions gives you some control of the interview and will create a dialog with the interviewer, which can help engage him or her in the process.

You are well armed with what you want to see in a culture having done your self assessment. You should prepare some questions that get at what is important to you. Of course, any organization is going to have some understanding of you following a behavioral interview. You should get a good idea too.

Leadership

Leadership style can vary from manager to manager. There are, however, influences the culture can have on overall style. When you interview with your hiring manager, you can ask him about his leadership style. Ask about the leadership style of his boss, and on up. What are his greatest concerns as a manager? How you would relate to one-another? A great question is “What keeps you up at night and how could I help there?” You should try to find out the latitude you will have to make decisions, how the approval process works, and what is the most important thing he is looking for in an employee.

Overall leadership

The top leaders of any organizations have influence throughout the culture. Some companies are more leader-centric than others, but characteristics that brought the rise to leadership in any organization will be emulated as a driver of success.

Is there an understood vision in the company? Do employees understand how what they do impacts the vision? Is there ambiguity in what needs to be done? What do people say about the top leadership of thee company? How visible is the top leadership? What is his or her background? Of course you will already know the relative success of the organization through your research. How is the success related to the top leadership?

Day-to-day operations

Being comfortable in day-to-day activities can make a job successful or miserable. You should be aware of how a typical day will be and match it to what you are comfortable with.

You might want to find out what percentage of time you would be in meetings, how much travel there is and how many hours a week people normally work. Ask them to describe a typical day, or if there are typical days. As you go to your interview, take the opportunity to look around the building. Is it a place you in which would be comfortable? What do the offices look like and how much personalization is there? Is work stacked everywhere? What is the pace of work?

Other factors.

Are there groups of people in informal conversation or is everyone buried in their work? Is there a place on site to get food, or does everyone leave the building for lunch?

How much service does the average employee have? If you are new and the people have long service, how will you be accepted?

When or if there was a restructure, how was it handled?

You can also learn a lot about an organization if it is publicly traded. Any internet financial service will allow you to drop in the stock signal and pull up information about the company. Recent press releases and actual news articles can be found. In some cases, there is may be a bulletin board that employees will use to air their thoughts. This can be very insightful.

Remember, you are choosing the company as much as they are choosing you. You should be comfortable working there. If you are, you are more likely to have a successful career in that organization.