Why you should hire based on values and behavioural fit

Hiring for Values and Behavioural Fit

Kristen Buckheit, Senior Operations Director explains why assessing candidates' values and behaviours can enable you to access the right talent.

With such a focus on Diversity & Inclusion being a driver for businesses today, it’s important to look beyond technical abilities. To drive a change for the better and to ensure we’re hiring for leaders of the future, you need to be focusing more on the behaviours demonstrated by candidates.

Addressing this key topic is paramount to successful future hiring. If you’re someone involved in any stage of the hiring process, read on to see why hiring for values and behavioural fit can help your business succeed – plus the risks of not addressing this.

Why hiring for values and behavioural fit is so important

Candidates who are aligned to your business’ values and behaviours are much more likely to be efficient in their roles. By ensuring you are take a candidate’s behaviours and values into consideration during the hiring process, you can build your teams around a shared and common ground instead of simply focusing on technical ability.

Transforming your hiring approach has the added benefit of communicating your employer brand effectively to external stakeholders. This will prove very effective for the business in the long-term.

Risks of failing to address values and behaviours

Hiring solely for technical abilities and overlooking values and behaviours can present you with two big risks.

1. Minimising access to the right talent

Failing to address behavioural fit during the hiring process means you are potentially missing out on the right talent for your business. While technical ability for the role is important, it can be taught. Values and behaviours are much more subjective, which means not addressing them during the first stages of the hiring process could mean missing out on someone whose values and behaviours are perfectly aligned to those of your business.

The key is thinking long term. Candidates whose values and behaviours are aligned to your business are more likely to work harder, be more passionate and ultimately be more of an asset to your business than someone hired just on technical ability.

2. Negatively impacting Diversity and Inclusion

Without factoring behavioural fit into your hiring process, there is a risk you will negatively impact D&I. This is especially important in the data and business intelligence sectors, where there are currently fewer female candidates working in this space.

The focus for your business should be on ‘how’ an employee performs, making you more objective to ‘what’ an employee is doing.

Benefits of transforming your hiring process

By ensuring your values and behaviours are taken into consideration during the hiring process, you are setting up your team for long term future success by hiring those with the  “right” fit, rather than simply technical ability. Your teams will be working towards the same goals and will see that their career development is important to the business.

By hiring people that have the same values and behaviours as the company, you are giving your employees the confidence that there is fairness and transparency in your recruitment process.

As well building a workforce that is aligned to and passionate about your values, this approach will also ensure your employer brand is being communicated to the external market effectively. In the long term, this will not only increase your ease of hiring, but those who apply are more likely to be aligned to your values and behaviours – creating an ever stronger team and business.

How one of our clients improved results

One of our global banking clients has seen the benefits of addressing this topic for themselves. By considering behaviours as part of their hiring, appraisal and customer service processes, they saw an uplift of 20% for female candidates interviewed. One role had a 75% female shortlist.

This gave our client the added benefit of helping to dispel myths such as gender imbalance and a lack of ethnic diversity. They also recently focused on behaviours when completing several executive hires, resulting in a shift in the executive committee's gender balance from 29% to 43% as of September 2020.

The client now maintains a key focus on behaviours across their Wealth and Personal Banking function, with telephone and face-to-face interviews covering four behavioural competencies. This is also supported by a sponsorship commitment by the Executive Leadership team, ensuring they continue to hire for the leaders of the future.

Three things to remember during your hiring processes

Embrace your values and behaviours. Ensure you are hiring your future employees and leaders to best support your D&I agenda, in turn supporting your customers and colleagues alike and not simply focusing on technical ability.

Always look to interview for a behavioural fit. Ensure your telephone interviews ask clear questions around your values and behaviours to get a sense of how aligned your candidate is. Factor in competencies that cover these areas on your telephone interviews.

Look to write a full suite of behavioural competencies for your face-to-face interviews. This really engages with the candidates and you will gain a more rounded view of the individual, not just their technical capability for a role.

Key takeaways for future successful hiring

The potential long-term benefits in hiring for values and behavioural fit are numerous. Here are my key takeaways for future successful hiring:

  1. You will increase your potential to access the right talent
  2. You will ensure you hire the right person for the right role
  3. You will increase your employee engagement, as internal candidates will have leaders to aspire to
  4. You will be able to drive your D&I agenda
  5. You will improve the positive perception of your employer brand in the external market, which will increase the quality of hires in the long term

Download our Hiring for Potential Toolkit to find out the latest assessment technologies you can use to hire for potential in your organisation. 

Request a free consultation and find out how Resource Solutions can help you access the right talent.