Establishing a cultural fit remotely

After Covid, many corporate working practices have changed.

More and more roles, including marketing and digital positions, are being advertised as hybrid working or with an element of working from home in locations like London. This opens up the job market for people working from home a fair distance from their employer and also can affect how everyone recruits.

So how do we adapt to these new circumstances? When hiring remotely, how can you be sure that your candidate is the right person for the job beyond the CV? They’ve ticked all the skill boxes, but can you really work out if there is a good cultural fit through a remote interview? Well, there are certainly things we can do to communicate values and get a sense of each other’s culture.

First of all, you need to have key cultural values in place. If you don’t have these, consider creating these through employee surveys. There may be a gap between what comes back and where you want to get to, but that will hopefully help you see the type of person you need to hire.

Demonstrate your culture through your interview style. If your team tends to rely heavily on digital communication, then maybe a response to a task should be in email format rather than or in addition to a deck.

Use videocalls not phone calls for interviewing so that you can feel as much like you’re having a face-to-face meeting as possible.

Ask questions based on real-life scenarios. Of course, you’ll need a few questions about what the candidate knows about the company and its competition, but to get a sense of the cultural fit, questions about how candidates would react to a certain situation and how this reaction fits with the rest of the company’s approach are a good way to see if the candidate shares your company’s values.

Additionally, ask ethical questions. If you are going to entrust someone you don’t know with working for you remotely, you want to get a sense of how they will handle difficult situations. For example, ask them how they would handle a hypothetical mistake: who they would communicate the mistake to, how they would resolve it. These things are crucial to know when you aren’t in a position to closely manage an employee’s work in person.

Be honest and candid. Give a total view of the company, both the positives and the negatives. In these new times, people need to hear the full picture and then make their own decision. There is never a time for overpromising and overselling, but this is certainly a time for all cards to be on the table. If the candidate reacts badly to this then they are probably not the right fit for you.

Get them to meet more than just HR and the hiring manager. We would recommend they meet at least 2 or 3 people from across teams (we recommend peers as well as a senior leadership team member including a Director of the business ) so that everyone can get a feel for cultural fit both ways.

Don’t rush it, if you need an extra step, an extra conversation, an extra task – take it.