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Hiring Experienced Consultants: How to Screen for Cultural Fit

By Jason Sanders

It’s Sunday night. You review your client commitments for the week, and it seems you have over committed yourself yet again. You just can’t find enough good people to cover your most important clients.

Perhaps you plan to double the size of your practice, and now face the challenge of hiring entire new teams of people. Maybe you need to replace your senior staff, and have the opportunity to reshape the character of your new team.

Whether you need to hire a whole team of experienced consultants, or just that golden one, you must consider how each new personality will fit into your organization. You probably know from experience that many, if not most, failed hires stem from poor cultural fit. On average, cultural mismatch accounts for about half of first year attrition.

In many cases, rapid turnover costs more than not hiring at all. If you take the time to calculate the cost, you will also think hard about how to reduce attrition.

So what can you do to make sure you hire and retain the right people?

Interviewing well and making good choices will begin to address this challenge. Look at your hiring practices, including how you screen for intangibles. Screening for cultural fit is not easy, but there are some actions you can take to increase your success.

1. Define yourself. Any search professional will tell you that most clients describe their cultures in similar ways. “We are collaborative, entrepreneurial, open-minded, team-oriented, and have a sense of humor.” Your recruiter will nod politely, having heard this before. Good recruiters find other ways to put their finger on the pulse. Even if they understand you, though, that does not mean that you are aware of the signals you are transmitting.

Using the same terms as other firms to describe your culture creates obstacles for you, your candidates, and your recruiter. Instead of screening broadly for intangibles, highlight one trait that you cannot do without.

Dave Sutton, former CEO of Inforte explains, “If you don't know what culture you have, you can't screen for it. We look for people who come from a culture of learning. I may ask a silly question like, ‘How many golf balls are in the air right now?’ If the candidate begins to enthusiastically analyze the problem, I know we are on the right track.”

2. Broadcast your values. Once you have decided on the most important element of fit, don’t keep it to yourself. To provide you with valuable feedback, the people in your practice need to speak the same language. Each may react to a candidate based on personal biases, so you need to be sure that candidates are screened for the values that are important to you.

Neal Prescott, Executive Vice President of Digitas, says that he and his team use the opportunity of exit interviews to assess their own culture. “We look back on why people left and integrate that into our screening process. Our exit interviews drive quantitative and qualitative comments about our hiring success.” Prescott assigns one person specifically to evaluate cultural fit, but relies on his whole team for insights. According to Prescott, “People will self-select out of the interview process, if you are forthcoming about your culture.”

3. Assign specific interviewers with the task of screening for fit. Interviewing and hiring are critical to business growth, but often take a back seat to client engagements. It is challenging enough to get meetings scheduled. Assigning one or two team members with the specific task of screening cultural fit will provide you with consistent, almost measurable input about your potential hires. The increasing capability of those assigned to this task and your increasing trust in their abilities will help you make effective decisions quickly, and save your team valuable interview time.

Stacey Martin, Human Resources Manager for AMS-CGI, says that she conducts fit interviews for her team. She does not use a fixed set of questions, but does focus on several important cultural elements. “The candidate must want to own a piece of the business, yet work in an ambiguous, global environment.” She reports a low attrition rate based on poor cultural fit. Instead, she attributes most experienced hire departures to lack of knowledge or delivery failure.

4. Test for one cultural element and get the rest. If you define your culture in a few words, it becomes much easier to measure candidates against that benchmark. Do not be afraid of missing the big picture while screening the details. Many hiring managers use the “airport test” as their primary screen. They think, “If we were stuck in an airport together for six hours, would I be able to stand this person.” Trust that you will know that and much more, even if you test for only one specific trait.

Peter Blatman, IT Strategy lead partner for Deloitte Consulting, says,” In an interview, we look for collaboration crediting the whole team. If the person uses the word ‘I’ a lot, it raises a flag. I prefer to hear about the candidate’s contribution, while giving credit to the team. If the team succeeds, you succeed.”  Blatman sees team skills as a determining factor to consider while making hiring decisions. His interviews, however, also reveal a lot about a candidate’s leadership, problem solving, and client skills.

5. Remember that every interview is a two-way street. Candidates begin to evaluate new opportunities in terms of their own desires. This includes functional and industry focus, size of company, travel requirements, and other tangible benefits an employer has to offer. When asked what differentiates opportunities, however, most say it’s the people. The new company “feels” like a good place to work. They are expressing their reaction to a company’s culture.

Mitch Rosenbleeth, Regional Managing Partner for Booz Allen Hamilton, describes a formalized process, which encourages interviewees to ask questions evaluating Booz Allen’s culture. This provides both a screening mechanism and information to the prospective hire. He recognizes that the candidate must understand and accept the culture in order to succeed. “We recently had a senior level candidate, who asked questions like, ‘Who do I need to get to know?’ and ‘How do I build my team here?’ That is the type of person who will fit in here.”

The decision to move to a new company is emotional as well as rational. Letting candidates know your values, and that you are screening for fit, will add to their comfort level. Screening for cultural fit gives you a competitive advantage in a tight hiring market. You transmit your organization’s personality through the questions you ask, as much as the statements you make.

6. Use your search firm as a resource. Just as you would not rely on a search firm for the final decision about skills, you should not rely on a search firm for the final decision about cultural fit. You can, however, obtain clues about a candidate’s style and values from your recruiter, especially if you have a long-term relationship with your search consultant.

Many times the most valuable asset a recruiter offers is the ability to provide feedback about intangibles. Recruiters make decisions every day about who they want and don’t want in their personal networks. A question you might ask your recruiter is, “How valuable would this person be as a member of your network?”  Or “Apart from this search, under what circumstances would you reach out to this person?” At a minimum you should ask the recruiter to provide feedback about the candidate’s motivations. If you miss that, you are not taking advantage of a valuable resource.

7. Survey your top performers. Top performers provide maximum impact in a culture that suits them. So choosing an outstanding consultant means not just looking at past accomplishments, but understanding your own values and how a candidate reflects those values.

One way to help define your culture is to survey your key stakeholders about their views of your firm. Focusing on high achievers will not only tell you where you are, but where you want to be. Here are some sample questions you might ask the high achievers on your staff:

• Are our outstanding employees more exceptional achievers or more team players?


• Do they excel more in client communications or internal communications?


• Are they more knowledgeable about a particular industry or highly adaptable?


• Do they depend more on logic or on intuition to solve client problems?


• Are they more concerned with getting the right answer or making an impression on the client?


• Are they better at staying on task or creatively solving a problem?


• Are they more team leaders or self-starting entrepreneurs?

Try to include six or more participants in the survey to provide a basis for comparison. Make sure to take the survey yourself, and then see how the responses of others stack up against your own.

The answers that match yours and are consistent indicate that you understand and are communicating your culture well in those areas. The highest rate of consistency will illuminate your most dearly held values. Unevenness will show where you need to better define and communicate your values.

A clear assessment of your firm’s culture is a valuable asset and competitive differentiator for the hiring process. Once you have a good understanding of your values, you can communicate them to your organization and use them to screen candidates. You will screen more effectively and attract higher quality candidates. This will help lessen turnover and will make you a more attractive employer, creating a more cohesive, profitable organization.

Jason Sanders is Managing Partner of J. Sanders Associates, LLC, a search firm specializing in the placement of consulting executives. His firm has twenty years of experience helping professional service firms, corporations, and private investment companies select and hire the best consultants. Find out more at www.sandersassociates.com.