The importance of core values for hiring the right people
Make Things, Make Sense Podcast
Episode 4
What are core values ?
Values are non-negotiable behaviours, manifested through the critical few things that we absolutely exhibit every single day. They are the DNA of a company, responsible with holding us together despite our individual differences.
Core values make all the difference. There are 2 choices when it comes to core values:
- Talking about them
vs
- Living them
Examples of Core Values from other companies:
Google:
- Focus on the user and all else will follow.
- It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
- You can make money without doing evil.
- There’s always more information out there.
- You can be serious without a suit.
- Great just isn’t good enough.
Growth Gurus:
- Figure it Out
- Excited to Learn More
- Strive for Excellence
- Always Get it Done
Why are core values important?
Why not enjoy work? Hiring based on core values helps a team on the road to achieve the point where everyone “clicks” with each other. That’s because these values define the characteristics that you want every single person in the company to share so you can build the culture you want in your company. Core values can improve employee engagement which generally increases alongside job satisfaction and workplace morale.
Employees whose personal values are very well-aligned with their company’s values are five times more likely to report being engaged. Not only that, aligned organizations are six times more profitable than those that aren’t.
In general, it’s recommended to focus on infusing core values into two specific areas in the hiring process:
- Attracting Talent – Marketing your company’s values to attract applicants that want to work in a culture like yours
- Evaluating Candidates – Confirming that the applicants share and exhibit your core values
- Set interview questions around the core values
How to set your core values
- Mars group: think of couple of people from your company that you would chose to recreate the best of your company on another planet;
- Slice of DNA: identify the people that reflect your values;
- these aren’t the people you want to send to Mars but the ones that would recreate the best version of you on Mars
- Jim Collins exercise: in this exercise try capture the values that the people in your organisation bring into their work, the values they carry in their lives.
- follow up by focusing on finding the intersections between all exercises in order to capture the true, authentic core values of your organisation
How to hire, review, reward & recognise people based on core values
If you think of building your team as a marketing funnel:
- Awareness – Attract the RIGHT talent
- Engagement – Sift out and hire the best culture fit and skill set
- Acquisition – The person works with us, they gell with the team, have a great time
- Brand loyalty – People are psyched about working with your company as employees, suppliers feel they gell well with you
- Brand Ambassadors – People felt like they were with their Tribe, so they promote that, even after they left it’s a memorable and pleasant experience
You can’t do either if you don’t know what your core values are.
At Growth Gurus we use the People Analyser Tool to help us with these processes. Evaluating people is a difficult and subjective task. With the People Analyzer, you will be able to cut through the complexity and clearly identify if someone fits in your culture and is filling the right seat. You can now give it a try for free by checking it out down below.
Conclusion
Don’t compromise on your core values: they are crucial for the success of your company. Identify them through the exercises proposed and integrate them in your HR process through the People Analyzer Tool.
