You’ve gone through 3 gruelling interviews. You think you’ve hit it off with your future manager and have finally received that much-awaited phone call from HR to tell you that you’ve got the job.
So… your first day, at long last, has arrived and you’re there bright and early and ready to hit the ground running.
To your absolute horror…
You find that Mondays at the office are known as “Pop Mondays”, an in-office event where everyone gathers in the boardroom to sing their favourite pop songs in front of their colleagues.
No! Karaoke has never been for you and you think that pop music should be a substitute for the death penalty. It’s a bit too late now, but you start seriously questioning whether the culture here will be the right fit for you.
You spend 8 hours, if not more, at the office interacting with co-workers and your bosses.
So if the culture isn’t the right fit for you, then the environment can get very toxic very fast and can make you utterly miserable.
On the other hand, finding the right culture fit can not only motivate you to get up in the morning and look forward to tackling the day, but can also lead to improved self-esteem – a feeling of fitting in and living the brand and improved mental and physical health.
So how would you go about finding the right fit for you?
- Identify companies that are looking for someone who has your particular skill-set and are aligned with your career goals and skills
- Start narrowing down the pool of companies that will be the right culture fit for you
- Start looking at social media sites such as Facebook. An organisation’s Facebook page can tell you a lot about what they get up to when they aren’t working, where they hang out after hours, whether they dedicate a lot of their time towards CSI projects, have team-building events or karaoke mornings etc
- Ask questions during the interview as this is a great platform to have any of your cultural questions answered
- Ask people, the more the better, as this will help paint a broader and more accurate picture of the environment
The biggest reason people leave their jobs is because they do not fit in culturally. The right company culture fit will not only lessen the probability of a short stay at your new job, but can also determine just how much you will grow within the organisation.
