Matchmakers: Make Sure IT Hires Fit the Culture

Computerworld - When job seekers sit down for an interview with John Golden, chief technology officer at CNA Insurance Co., he sometimes hits them with this question:

"You're stuck in traffic. What do you do?"

Some candidates say they would grab their cell phones, others that they'd leave the highway to look for an alternate route. A few say they'd get really mad. This isn't casual conversation. Golden believes that the response provides insight into a candidate's character, and it's one way the Chicago-based insurance firm ensures that new IT employees match well with the company's culture.

"There isn't a right or wrong answer, but it gives you a lot of insight about them, and now you can ask a lot of other questions," Golden says. "We need people who can adapt and change. We need people who can negotiate. We need strong communications skills. You can't garner those out of a resume."

Finding the right match between employee and company has gotten trickier over the past few years, according to companies on Computerworld's Best Places to Work in IT list . Human resources staffers, who once needed to sell the company's ideals to candidates who were weighing several job offers, now must carefully sift through hundreds of resumes, looking for the best candidate. What's more, unhappy employees aren't leaving like they used to. With turnover rates at less than 2% at these Best Places companies, the wrong hiring choice could have long-term repercussions.

"People who come here stay here. So we're pretty careful about the people we hire, because there's a good chance we could be working with them for 20 years," says Mark Horn, a business development specialist at American Family Mutual Insurance Co. in Madison, Wis., who has hired 50 IT employees over the past year.

All of these companies look for candidates who can lead, communicate and work with a team and who understand their businesses. Some try to forecast the long-term potential of college graduates, who will make up the bulk of their new hires.

Finding a candidate who clicks with the company's ideals and culture has transformed hiring into both a science and an art. The best companies have come up with creative and meticulous ways of identifying that perfect match.

Apply the Chemistry Test

At CNA Insurance, Golden keeps close tabs on "bad attrition"—the loss of employees who possess the "three C's": character, chemistry and capabilities. Right now, CNA's bad attrition is zero, thanks to the hiring team's growing ability to accurately read job candidates from the start.

CNA has found that an effective approach is to give candidates a hypothetical situation and "ask them to problem-solve themselves out of it," Golden explains. "How well rounded is the solution that they come up with? Do they talk about the people issues, the need for communication and common priorities? By the nature of what they talk about, it gives you an idea of how they approach the problem."