How to Get a Clearer Understanding of Work Culture When Recruiting for a Job

Have you ever worked in a company and felt like it was a bad fit?

The work culture of your employer and your direct supervisor and peers can be among the primary factors determining your job and career satisfaction. If there’s a mismatch, you’ll know it. And you’ll likely be unhappy.

The problem is — company culture can be really hard to figure out.

When I work with people to help them identify an ideal culture fit through in-depth self-assessment, the process invariably leads to the following question: How can I tell if a company's culture is a good fit for me?

If you ask about culture, you’ll get platitudes

The instinct of most people is to address the question of company culture head-on. Most of the people I work with are highly goal-oriented. Why beat around the bush if something is this important? When getting to know a company and its employees, they’re likely to ask directly, “So, what’s the culture like at (insert company name here)?”

A-plus for thoroughness. But it doesn’t work. Here’s why.

Good manners and self-interest can cloud the picture

It shouldn't come as a surprise that people won't want to say bad things about their co-workers, colleagues or a client.

Part of it is courtesy. I’m convinced that despite the daily headlines we’re exposed to (e.g. “So-and-so rips/blasts/crushes so-and-so”) and the poor example set by so many politicians and media personalities, the standard advice still holds: If you don’t have anything nice to say…

And part of it may be driven by self-interest. The person you’re speaking with may, quite reasonably, worry that whatever they say could get back to co-workers or the people or organization they’re talking about, especially if they say something less than flattering.

Who are we kidding? At some point, it probably will.

They’ll tell you what they think you’ll want to hear

Another complicating factor is that the people who have the best insight into the culture of a company are the people currently working there. Not only are they going to be limited by self-interest and concern for their own job and reputation, but they may also have a stake in whether you accept a job that's offered to you.

For example, if you’re speaking with a recruiter, internal or external, that person’s take on a company’s culture will likely be influenced by their hope to achieve a high recruiting yield. In other words, if offers are made, will they be accepted?

If you were to be offered a job and then say ‘no’ — influenced by someone’s less-than-stellar review of the culture of the company making the offer — you could be doing more than disappointing a few people. You could be reducing someone’s end-of-year rating, their performance bonus, or their client relationship.

If the people recruiting you like you and could see you on their or their client’s team, they’ll want you to say ‘yes’. They don't want to be wasting their time — and recruiting takes a lot of time and effort — and they don’t want to be rejected.

When I was running recruiting for Neutrogena, I experienced first-hand how demoralizing it could be for my colleagues (and myself) when a highly-favored candidate would say ‘no’ and go to a competitor. And I saw the same when it came to my clients as an executive recruiter. The worst thing that could happen would be if a university president were to get on the phone to make an offer to the person they thought would be their next cabinet-level appointment, and then the candidate would decline.

Actually, that never happened. Because we made sure it didn’t.

This is all a long way of saying that there are big incentives for people involved in a recruiting process to tell you what they think you'll want to hear in order to accept their current or potential job offer.

So you need to do your research and brush up on some code-breaking skills.

There are big incentives for people involved in a recruiting process to tell you what they think you'll want to hear in order to accept their current or potential job offer. So you need to do your research and brush up on some code-breaking skills.

Conduct your due diligence

Sure, you need to consider role, responsibility, title, comp, prestige, and a host of other factors when choosing a job. But corporate culture can be as important or even more important. It’s definitely part of the mix.

Not only can work culture affect your day-to-day experience in a job, but if your style isn’t a good fit for the company’s overall culture, then it can also affect your advancement and your career prospects.

So why then do so many people only start to think about work culture as a final step in the recruiting process? In my experience as a recruiter and a coach, that’s exactly what happens.

My perspective: Get started early.

Ideally, get started on researching the culture of a company or organization you might join before you’re in too deep. It could be hard to pull out of a recruiting process once you’re in the semi-finalist or finalist stage. Creeping commitment and all that. Especially if you have a recruiter helping you along.

Do the basic research

I won’t spend too much time on this. You know what to do.

Check out Glassdoor and other sites that are repositories of employees’ thoughts about their employers. Take the reviews with a grain of salt, and remember that people tend to provide reviews when they’re either really satisfied or really dissatisfied. If things are okay, then why bother writing the review in the first place?

Read articles about the leadership of the company you’re potentially interested in joining. Pay special attention if they’re quoted in articles or are being interviewed. Does what they say and the tone in which it’s delivered inspire you or leave you with a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach, or somewhere in between?

Learn to read code

I’ll share a secret. I used to write in code.

No — I wasn’t in the CIA or at the NSA — although I was a Russian and Eastern European studies major. I was, as you know, an executive recruiter.

My firm was paid by a client to represent them in the best possible light and to find exceptionally qualified candidates for some of their most consequential hires. If there was a challenge in terms of company culture, we weren’t going to address it head-on. We learned to write and speak in code.

It wasn’t malicious, but it served everyone’s interests. The clients expected us to represent them and their opportunity well. On the other side of the equation, we wanted to find the best candidates and ones who had a realistic expectation of the challenges they might face, from a business perspective and from a work culture perspective. After all, it wouldn’t do the client any good if we found them an impeccably qualified candidate who then flamed out after only a few months on the job due to a culture mismatch.

So we used code to communicate the challenges.

Hypothetically, if I had a client with a Board that included a couple of disagreeable personalities who tended to grandstand, I might write or say that the ideal candidate for the role I was recruiting for would be “adept at influencing and building consensus among a range of stakeholders who are passionate about representing their viewpoints.” Not necessarily negative, but if you were to stop and think about that statement, you might have a follow-up question or two.

How much of the job is about influencing and building consensus?

Why is that the case?

Are there specific players among the key stakeholders who require more influence and relationship-building than others?

I think you get the drift.

You need to be on the lookout for statements similar to the one I offered above, either in written form or in conversation. Look and listen for words or phrases that are ambiguous or unclear. If something is open to interpretation, then it’s probably a good idea to consider if it might be ‘code’. Then dig a little deeper.

Here’s one that’s pretty common: You’re interviewing for a job and you ask one of your potential boss’ direct reports: “What’s it like working for so-and-so?”

And they answer: “Oh — he’s great. He really cares about the business and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty and diving down into the details.”

Now, that could be pretty positive. A boss who’s engaged and has the patience to listen to all the details. Unfortunately, that’s one of the most positive interpretations of the observation made by your potential colleague.

This potential boss could also be a micromanager. And, while positive-sounding, the statement that their direct report made to you remains true to the not-so-positive facts. You were told the truth. It was just up to you to figure out exactly what that truth really was.

Don’t accept generalizations, ask for stories

In order to get around the comforting platitudes and cut through the code, ask for stories. Instead of asking questions that start with “What’s it like at…?”, you should be asking the people involved in recruiting you to “Tell me about a time when…”

It’s the old behavioral interview construct turned back on the employer by the candidate. If they can use it, then why can't you?

When you pose this type of question, you’re asking someone to tell you a story. If they tell you about something that actually happened, then you’re not inviting too much interpretation or generalization. You can get the facts and draw your own conclusions.

If your potential boss is a micromanager, then a story about how decisions are made in his team will likely include details about how he insists on personally approving most decisions, even the small ones. Much more helpful than the “he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty” smokescreen.

Conclusion

Culture can and may end up being one of the primary determinants of your happiness and success in a job and company. Don’t leave your investigation into it until the final stages of a recruiting process.

• Start your research into work culture early
• Don’t accept generalizations and platitudes
• Learn to cut through the code
• Get people to tell you actual stories

Then you can draw your own conclusions about the work culture of a company that you’re thinking of joining. If things check out, then you can feel reasonably confident that you're on the right track.