Criteria Corp Blog

Culture fit has been a buzzword for a long time, with very little consensus about what it actually means. On the surface, culture fit is something that any company would desire in a prospective employee: someone who has bought into the organization’s mission, vision, and values. But over time, “culture fit” has warped into something less desirable: a bias towards hiring people who look, act, and think just like everyone else in the organization.

Adaptive assessments, sometimes referred to as computer adaptive testing (CAT), represent a type of assessment that adapts to the test-taker’s ability level. While adaptive assessments would not have been possible in the early days of pencil and paper tests, computers make it possible to deliver assessments that can adapt to each test-taker in real-time.

Social media platforms have mixed the personal and professional lives of people for all to see. As a result, more companies are incorporating social media checks into their hiring processes to gain a better sense of workplace fit for a potential hire. 

In a hiring market dominated by a growing skills gap and the persistent challenge of finding qualified job candidates, many employers are increasingly turning to training programs to pick up some of the slack. After all, just because you couldn’t find the perfect candidate for the role doesn’t mean you can leave the position open indefinitely.

In the last few decades, we’ve seen an explosion of creative perks and benefits designed to attract each new generation of job seekers. And as much as these perks play a role in swaying a candidate’s final decision, it’s hard to ignore the number one reason that just about everyone shows up to work every day: the money. Research from Glassdoor confirmed this relatively unsurprising fact: job seekers listed salary as the most important factor when evaluating a job opportunity, with 67% listing it as a top factor. Whether a position is salaried, hourly, or even commissioned, potential applicants want to be compensated for their education, skills, experience, expertise and hard work. 

Corporate social responsibility is a commitment that a company makes to practice ethical behavior through initiatives that can range from a greener office to community service. Job seekers are increasingly interested in working at an organization that gives them a sense of purpose, and now many job seekers use a company’s corporate social responsibility as a positive signal when looking for a new place of employment. According to the Snapshot Employee Research Survey, approximately 70% of employees want to work for a company with similar values. Here are a few ways you can implement socially responsible initiatives in your office: 

Outdoor Initiatives 

Based on Deloitte’s “2017 Volunteerism Survey,” approximately 89% of respondents state that company sponsored volunteer activities create a better working environment. Offices can build a fun workplace culture through community service activities. Large outdoor activities such as working with an organization like Habitat for Humanity, helping at an animal adoption event, cleaning up a local beach, or participating in a charity run benefits your community while also strengthening your team through out-of-office bonding. 

Many companies—from tiny startups to well-established enterprises—are looking for real, effective ways to diversify their teams. Workplace diversity isn’t just about race or gender. A truly diverse workplace includes people of all ages, races, ethnicities, genders, religions, abilities, sexual orientations, and ways of thinking. 

Does your organization have any bad managers? If you’re like nearly every other organization in the world, you can probably think of at least one or two managers at your organization who are just not good at managing people.

Candidate experience is dominating today’s narrative about how to attract and hire the best candidates. There is plenty of research out there to convince us of how critically important candidate experience is. A good candidate experience can improve a company’s overall employer brand and can drive long-term improvements in candidate quality. But when it comes down to the day-to-day reasons behind improving the candidate experience, many companies are simply hoping to reduce candidate drop-off, or the number of candidates who abandon an application due to how long or time-consuming it is.

When you’re in the process of hiring a new employee, you typically have a laundry list of skills, qualities, and characteristics that you’d like to see in the ideal candidate. Of course, you know that it will be nearly impossible to find the perfect candidate who checks every box, but how do you distinguish between the qualities that are critical for the role and the qualities that are just “nice-to-have”? One way to parse this problem is to look at two different types of qualities: innate and acquired. Then we’ll dive into how they can help you make the best decision based on your hiring needs.