Company Culture Barometer

When does employee experience start? Onboarding? The day they sign the contract? I believe it starts way earlier. Employee experience and exposure to a company’s culture start from the moment the recruitment process begins. Recruiting is a barometer of company culture. Look at the way a company approaches recruiting, and you’ll understand a lot about its culture. You’ll also see whether the values and culture set out in the about pages and mission statements are really being held up. Let me try and explain a bit further, drawing from my own job search experiences. 

Rejection or Reflection

Ever get a rejection from a company you think you’ve had a good interview with? For me, it goes somewhat like this. First, there’s a twinge of sadness at the rejection (but not too much, because I’m a seasoned job search pro). Then there’s a bit of gratitude that they at least let you know the result, and didn’t ghost you. Third, there’s a bit of admiration that they even tried to give some form of feedback instead of general platitudes. 

Now I’m all about continuous improvement and always trying to learn new things, so I try to understand what they mean by the feedback and what I can learn from it going forward. It’s at this point that everything falls apart. 

Like what does it mean when a company tells you that they think you won’t be able to “advocate for the team” when rejecting you for a role that doesn’t have anything to do with that, and wasn’t brought up even tangentially during the aptitude test or the three rounds of interviews?

Are interviews showing the best side of the company?

That one wasn’t even so bad, albeit a little mystifying. One instance that made me fume was when a “reputed, established” company had me take half a day off work, make a long commute to the out-of-the-way head office, and then reject me for being “too experienced”. Why waste all that time, and make me waste all that time and effort, when my experience is clearly visible in my CV? Why did I need to almost get sunstroke and waste nearly a whole workday for this, on top of all the phone calls and screening interviews? 

I normally just thank the recruiter who sends the rejection, and move on with my life. But with this instance, I really wanted to say something. So I gave this company my own feedback. The reply made it clear that this was an “old school” type company where people felt that they had all the “power” in their hands because they’re established and making enough money to keep ticking over for a while simply because of momentum. Bullet dodged, I supposed.

Does your process support finding diverse talent?

But established companies aren’t the only ones losing out on their chance to recruit diverse, talented professionals. Let me tell you about the time I interviewed at a so-called “high growth” startup. This company made something I really liked; and I also had a friend who had been working there since the very early days, who’d always told me good things about the company culture there. So when they closed a huge round of funding and started hiring more people, applying for an Agile Coach role was a no-brainer in my eyes. 

The first online screening rounds were good. I started feeling like it really was going to be a good fit for me. Then came the final stage of the process before they’d make the hiring decision. I was to spend a day at their office, do a simulation exercise with the current team of Agile Coaches, have a final interview, experience the office, all that jazz. The recruiter gave me options to choose from, and I chose a day that worked for me from among them. All good so far, right?

So I went to the office, and while one of the Agile Coaches was showing me around, he kept saying how the day I had chosen wasn’t ideal. “Why was I given this option, then?” is what I wanted to ask, but I kept quiet just then because I thought maybe this guy was having a bad day. 

Then we moved on to the simulation exercise and interview, which I thought went well. I was then supposed to have lunch with the team, but half of them left with different excuses. So here I was, trying to make the best of my day, having lunch with the dour dude who’d grumbled while showing me around before, and another guy who was friendlier. I found out during lunch that Friendly Guy had graduated from college a few months ago and was already an Agile Coach. I was flabbergasted, but then I decided to spin this positively and think that I definitely had a good chance of being recruited since I definitely had a bit more experience than the apparent standard. 

At this point, my rose-tinted glasses had slipped a bit, and I thought at the end of the day that I wouldn’t be too disappointed if this company rejected me. I wasn’t sure I’d accept an offer at that point. I saw far too many white men, and most of the women I did see around the office were not in development teams. I felt a bit out of place in that office, but dismissed all this as my own insecurity. After all, my friend, who is also Indian, worked at this company in their other office. He always said he loved working there. So this must all be me and my negative self-talk, right? Maybe I just went in on a day that wasn’t ideal for meeting the entire diverse range of people who worked there.

Then, a few days later, I got the rejection email. What does it say about a company when they reject you for an Agile Coach position because you tried to get everyone in the room to come to a consensus during your simulation exercise? Isn’t that what you’re, you know, supposed to do as an Agile Coach?

What does “good fit” even mean?

There was also a bit about not being a “good fit” and so on. Which, honestly, at that point, I didn’t think about much. I was just flabbergasted at the previous sentence and let it slip from my mind. 

Of course, my friend and I had a conversation about the whole process. In the weeks during this whole process, both of us had been too busy to really talk. Now, a few weeks later, we had the time. My friend told me that the diversity bit was true, but that the company wasn’t as diverse as they put themselves out to be. He said that the new funding had turned management upside down, and the company was simply growing too fast to keep their original culture intact. He also told me that the churn rate was insane, among other things. 

Now, a year and a half later, this company is still afloat. I still like their product. My friend still works there. The difference is, my friend goes to farewell drinks for colleagues a few times a week (whenever lockdown measures allow it). The company is no longer the star of the startup ecosystem in this vibrant European city. It’s no longer mentioned in conversations speculating about which startups could be the next unicorn. The core product is still good, and they still haven’t burned through that massive funding, so they’re still ticking over - propelled by momentum.

I won’t pretend to give any advice or analysis about why this happened, or what kind of hiring philosophy and/or processes could have stemmed this bleeding out of the company’s originally wonderful culture. I’m going to leave my anecdotal experiences here and let you think - about your own job search experiences, about how your company approaches recruiting, and about whether there’s anything you can do about it. 

Feedback needs to provide value

I will say one thing though - don’t give “feedback” just for the sake of giving it. If you don’t have specific, actionable feedback that you can put in writing, just send a simple “we regret to inform you” and move on. It’s okay, I promise. 

Written by Lalitha Kalkulapati