Culture fit is very often the determining factor on whether an employee stays at a job long-term. With one out of two workers quitting before 18 months, managers could use some help.
Despite years of urging hiring managers and HR professionals to focus employee selection on cultural and team fit, many hiring decisions still ignore attitude and personal values, especially at a time when skilled workers are scarce and unfilled jobs plague many businesses. When the education and experience fits, it seems to blind managers to the fact that no matter how good the wings, pigs won’t fly.
Well, if managers don’t get the importance of culture fit, job applicants sure do. A new app has been released that helps job seekers and employees figure out how well matched they are – or aren’t – to the company.
The app, developed by Good.co, is another warning shot across the employer’s bow – when it comes to hiring. Too many companies prefer to ignore and look the other way. Employers aren’t the Wizard behind the curtain anymore. When they finally pull back the curtain and look outside, the job and labor markets will look much different. Job applicants are now often more savvy, more sophisticated, and better equipped to make job choices than managers are prepared to make good hiring decisions. While employers have been reluctant to assess jobseekers for job and culture and job fit using various assessments, jobseekers seem to be doing it on their own. Jobseekers – at least the ones owning the skills and talent – are now making the decision to apply or accept a job based on fit, not the other way around. This reversal of fortune should scare the bejeezus out of management.
What’s more is that Good.co ditched their web application and decided to focus exclusively on mobile devices. It’s another sign how job applicants are using mobile devices to look for and apply to jobs…while many companies are still living in a world of paper and email applications.
Job seekers want to apply for a job, chat with management, participate in an interview, and even complete a pre-employment assessment via their mobile devices – just like they shop, buy, communicate, and even complain with businesses every day as customers. Employers still want jobseekers to fill out lengthy applications on paper or on a non-mobile friendly website or email a resume. Far worse, the response and feedback to jobseekers is slow and often non-existent. It’s another indication how out of touch many businesses are with the new realities of staffing a workforce.
Now I’m not saying that this app is the end-all-and-be-all of employee screening. It’s not. But it is the beginning of a tsunami-like shift in how employers will hire and jobseekers (and employees) will find new jobs. It’s an indication about how much technology, social media, the Internet, and a demographic shift has changed recruiting and employee screening.
For now these personality quizzes are mostly entertaining. But as these tech companies accumulate more and more data, hiring and retention will become very interesting as job seekers and employees assess their fit with a company before the company even has a chance to contact them. Stay tuned for more about the humanizing of job search and employee selection.