Hiring Tip: Evaluating Company Values, Culture and Internalization of Culture

The security industry, like any other, faces hiring challenges, and identifying, engaging, recruiting and hiring the best talent available is critical to fueling future strategic growth plans. A key component of the hiring process, before even seeking new candidates, is cultivating your company’s core values and culture and making sure they are internalized across the organization.

A company’s values and culture are the lure in your talent tackle box to attract and catch great talent today. While company values and culture have always been significant factors for successful companies, it’s good business to take time to check whether these key factors reflect current reality. When you step back and take a closer look, there may be discrepancies between your words and actions and how relevant they are to today’s talent.

Core Values and Culture

Beliefs, values and culture are what we hear, observe and learn through our personal and digital interactions. You can subtly feel, see, hear and experience different company cultures and how well everyone connects at a company. Diversity can often be the key to new perspectives, innovation and connections within your company culture.

Candidates can quickly “feel” the culture of a company by how well you invite them into the culture by laying out career paths and actively listening to their ideas and with onboarding processes that consistently leverage your company strengths.

Culture is difficult to define and put into specific words, but it is very easy to see by how everyone is treated, respected, listened to and welcomed into a company. Do not take this important step for granted; companies must always revise, revisit and internalize it to keep their cultures relevant and current for today’s talent market.

How to Test Internalization of Your Company Culture

The Employer’s Complete Guide to Hiring, produced exclusively for the Security Industry Association (SIA) by Matterhorn Consulting as a benefit to members, shares this exercise to help you effectively test how well your company culture is internalized is across the organization.

• Ask different people to select three to five words to describe the essence of working at the company.
• Ask different people at your company what words they would choose to describe the benefits of doing business with your company.
• What virtues (e.g., integrity) do you want your employees to possess to make them team players?These qualities come from within the person.
• Engage your customers and ask them to choose three words to describe working with your company.

Compare the results for consistency or dissonance. Start talking and walking the words you have chosen to define who you are. Knowing which answers and behaviors relate to your chosen virtues will indicate a cultural fit during the interview process.

Along with more information on core values, culture and organizational mission and vision, SIA’s full 12-step hiring guide includes tips on company vision and mission, setting expectations, making job offers, onboarding and more. Get the guide here.