Onboarding New Employees for Startups: The Culture

Posted by luxrco under Startups
From http://blog.luxr.co 3797 days ago
Made Hot by: techmedia on November 27, 2013 12:39 pm

Great leaders help new employees understand the norms of behavior and patterns of work. This post lists the key onboarding topics that get new hires ready to hit the ground running as a high functioning member of your team.

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Written by bloggerpalooza
3795 days ago

Leaders should lead that is why they are called leader and culture is something the leader should see when he or she is leading an international team.

Thank you for sharing this to bizsugar community. It is really a great opportunity to see everyone's opinion on something worth knowing.

Keep it up.

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Written by luxrco
3797 days ago

Hi Heather. Great questions.

Regarding question 1, we always aim for a good personality/culture fit. We find that it is absolutely the most important indicator of success in the company. And when we talk about culture fit, we don't mean "do they like the same music/video games that we do" or "will they go out drinking with us." We're looking at how they interact with other people. So some of the things that I talk about in this post are addressed in the interview process (like personal goals, and patterns of work), but on a much higher level. Once we get them in the door, the briefing they get is more tactical: How will we work together day-to-day. I think you could easily incorporate a lot of this into the interview process as part of the conversation. I don't believe for a minute that the interview should be limited to "qualifications." Most things that people think of as qualifications can be learned. Emotional sophistication tends to be one of those things you either have or don't have. If you work with me though, I want you to have it.

These two answers actually go together:

For question 2, the most difficult part is the "Patterns of Work." In terms of onboarding, this is easy. We talk about our values and how we work together, but in terms of hiring, it comes back to finding that good culture fit. We look for mature, rational, empathetic people who don't let their egos get in the way. It's hard to evaluate this until you've worked with someone for a couple of weeks. It's easy to sit down and say "this is how we treat each other here" but once people's emotions come out that's when you see who they really are. And it's not always who you thought you were hiring.

I hope this helps. I'm happy to continue the conversation.

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Written by HeatherStone
3797 days ago

Great insights. I do think the gap between who you hire and who you think you're hiring is the big issue here. It's easy to set this as your goal but sometimes very hard to pull it off successfully. I'm wondering if there are any techniques you could share (without disclosing your entire bag of tricks, of course) for trying to evaluate cultural fit during what must inevitably be the all too short interview process.

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Written by HeatherStone
3798 days ago

Hi Luxr,

This ends up being a more important part of the process than most people realize and I think it's something some companies seem to spend zero time on. My questions are 1.) to what degree is this a continuation of the hiring process, in the sense that you should probably be looking for someone who might be a good fit to your culture from the beginning, and 2.) what part of this process have you had the most trouble with? What part is the most challenging? It would be great if you could respond in the comment section on BizSugar because I think the general community would get a lot out of your insights here.

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