Note: This post was updated in February 2023 with new research.

Company culture is an important consideration for job seekers.

In February 2023, I surveyed more than 1,200 employees. A whopping 95 percent said they consider a company’s culture before applying for a job.

Even after people apply, culture remains an important consideration. My research shows that 43 percent of employees have turned down a job offer because the company had a poor culture.

Culture is also a reason existing employees choose to stay or go, with 64 percent of employees indicating they’ve left a company due to the culture. (You can see that research here.)

So how exactly do job applicants evaluate your company's culture?

I posed that question on LinkedIn and got a lot of great responses. Here's a summary, along with some commentary of my own.

What is company culture?

Culture is defined as how people in an organization think and act. To job applicants, this often boils down to “What’s it like to work here?”

This might include a few things:

What are general norms and expectations for the workplace?
How do coworkers treat each other?
Are employees proud to work for the company?
How are senior leaders viewed by employees?
What is a typical workday like?

Every organization has its own unique qualities. Candidates want to know if they can see themselves working for your company and if they’ll enjoy it.

Applicants do their research

Many job applicants do a lot of research before applying for a job with your company.

The employer review site, Glassdoor, is one popular resource. It contains anonymous reviews and ratings of thousands of companies.

Many also use LinkedIn extensively.

"I’ll review who the leaders are, Google them, find them on LinkedIn, [and] review their profiles," wrote Thomas Velasquez. "If I know someone, I will reach out and see if I can get an informational interview."

Aida Soleimani takes a similar approach. "It’s been helpful to reach out to employees on LinkedIn not involved in the interview process and ask them what they like or dislike about the company, what they would change and if they have thought about leaving the company. Sometimes it also helps to reach out to ex-employees and ask similar questions."

"One thing I use is the company’s hiring trends," wrote Greg Freeman. LinkedIn Premium users can quickly access information such as the company's growth rate and the average tenure of employees.

Some, like Jessica Hollo, check a company's social media accounts. "What does the company feel is important enough to portray to a wider audience?"

"I analyze the texts & overall narration on the website (mission, values, key concepts etc) & in the job description," wrote Anastasia Zarusskaia. "The language usually speaks for itself."

One way to make it easier for applicants to research your company culture is to include a culture page on your website. (See examples in this post.)

The interview process is important

Applicants evaluate the interview process itself to get a sense of an organization's culture. Does the organization seem to value them and their time, or are they treated poorly?

Multiple interview rounds can be a red flag, especially for applicants with jobs, school, childcare, and other responsibilities that must be juggled to accommodate several days of interviewing.

One-way video interviews are another turnoff. Some companies try to be more efficient by asking applicants to record short videos of themselves answering screening questions, but many candidates report having a bad experience.

The interview setting is also important.

I've seen job interviews happen at Starbucks and other public places, where the applicant is asked to respond to personal questions within earshot of other customers. It can be a jarring experience.

Applicants also assess the interviewer and other employees they meet.

"I try to make my impression from how [the] interviewing process is going," wrote Samer Mcshat. "I do my assessment usually when the interviewer gives me space to ask questions. That was always useful."

"I've asked to meet different team members across the company," added Marco Yim.

Many applicants are interviewing with multiple employers, and it’s a competitive process. You can stand out by making the interview process enjoyable, informative, and easy for applicants.

Interviewing the interviewer

Candidates frequently turn the tables on recruiters and hiring managers to interview them.

"How interviewers respond to questions about work/life balance, diversity, and salary negotiations during the interview says a lot about company culture," explained Jasonda Desmond. "I also like to talk to other people in the team. More often than not I am looking at how they react to questions or answers, in addition to what they say."

Brad Langebartels also looks for how people discuss the culture. He prepares questions ahead of time and then asks follow-up questions to learn more about the culture and check for inconsistencies. "If interviewer groups can demonstrate how their communicated vision is reflected in their public reputation and work culture, you will have one important factor to consider."

"One should also enquire about the team as you will eventually work with the team at the org," wrote Garvit Arora. "[The] company might have a people-first culture but as an employee it is important to know if that culture drills down to individual teams as well."

Interviewers can standout by proactively discussing culture.

“During interviews I speak about the company and department culture,” wrote Katrina Garcia. “I believe by opening the discussion proves we care about work/life balance, communication, and that we want to be a good fit for them equally as we want them for us.“

Conclusion

Culture is vitally important to job applicants, especially in a tight job market.

Make it easy for candidates to assess the company culture. Encourage people to do their research, share candid information about what it's like to work in your company, and make other employees readily available.

It's a bad idea to try to hide reality. "It's one of those intangible concepts that's really hard to fake comprehensively," wrote Scott Ontiveroz.

Share the real culture, warts and all. This will help attract employees who really want to work in your company, while discouraging candidates who might be short-timers anyway.

You can use this guide to hiring for culture fit for more ideas or grab my ideal candidate profile worksheet.

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

You've probably heard the adage, "Hire for attitude, train for skills."

It sounds good, but how exactly do you hire for attitude? Customer service leaders struggle with this one. Many rely on off-beat interview tactics they hear about in blogs and books, such as asking questions like "What kind of fruit best describes your personality?" Some just like to have a friendly conversation to see what sort of vibe they get from each person.

Researchers have confirmed you'd make better hiring decisions if you skipped these sort of interviews entirely.

You need a systematic process if you want to hire for culture fit.

There aren't a lot of great examples to follow. In fact, the biggest challenge when I wrote The Service Culture Handbook was finding good examples for the chapter on hiring. (One of the best examples I know is Publix.)

This post is an update from a post I wrote back in 2014.

Start by Defining Your Culture

The very first thing you need is a clear definition of your culture. It's pretty tough to hire people who fit your service culture if you can't describe that that is!

A service culture is defined by what's called a customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page.

Let's imagine we started an online wine store that focuses on helping customers learn about wine and explore new wineries, varietals, and wines from different regions. Our customer service vision might be: We make it fun to discover great wine.

So people who work in our company should not only love wine, but definitely not be wine snobs. They should enjoy learning about wine and helping others experience the fun and joy of learning about wine, too. (I really want to start this business now!)

We can now use this vision as a basis for hiring people who will embrace our service culture.

Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

The next step is to identify the characteristics of an employee who fits your company's service culture. I use this worksheet to create what's called an ideal candidate profile.

This profile separates the characteristics we want in an employee into two categories:

Must Have Characteristics
Like to Have Characteristics

The must have characteristics are attributes a candidate must have or we would not consider hiring them. For instance, everyone we hire for our online wine store must have an enthusiasm for wine. They don't necessarily need to be an expert, they just need to really like learning about it.

A like to have characteristic is an attribute that would help us make a hiring decision but isn't essential. So we might not require our wine store employees to have extensive knowledge of different wine varietals, but a candidate who did have this knowledge might have an advantage over other candidates with similar qualifications.

One key test for your ideal candidate profile is to compare it to your existing employees. You'll need to revise your profile if you have any successful employee who did not possess one of the must haves when they were hired.

Devise Screening Tests

The final step in creating your hiring process is to devise tests to screen candidates for each item on your ideal candidate profile.

The most common way to do this is through interview questions. Each question should be designed to uncover something specific. You should also have a clear answer key before conducting the interview.

For instance, we could test our online wine shop candidates for the "enthusiasm for wine" characteristic by asking them to tell us about a recent wine tasting experience.

A answer that indicated a culture fit would be an enthusiastic story about discovering new wine, such as going wine tasting at a local winery or wine bar. A poor culture fit answer would be someone who hadn't tried any new wine recently, admits they don't really like wine, or describes a story that sounds more like going out and partying.

I highly recommend Janis Whitaker's excellent book, Interviewing by Example, for clear guidance on how to write effective interview questions.

There are other ways to test an employee's qualifications besides interview questions. Here are a few examples:

Resume or LinkedIn profile
Skills assessments
Small project

We might screen potential wine shop employees for the "continuous learner" attribute by looking for recent training classes, certifications, or education on their resume or LinkedIn profile. These don't necessarily need to be wine related since any recent learning indicates this person is likely a continuous learner.

Some companies have customer service employees respond to a realistic customer email to gauge both their writing style and resourcefulness. Assessing skills through a small project is another great way to learn a lot about a candidate.