How can you best understand company’s true culture during a job interview, before you actually work there? Have you worried you’ll accept a role that don’t align with your work style or values?
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- Five strategic interview questions to gain insights into workplace dynamics
- How to “read between the lines” to reveal what they really mean about company culture
- The importance of assessing if a company’s values and work style align with your own
In this episode, we’ll talk about how to decode a company’s culture through thoughtful questioning during the interview process. Learn how to identify red flags, uncover strengths, and determine if a company’s work style aligns with your own. By the end of this episode, you’ll be equipped to make informed decisions about your career, so you can work and thrive in the environment that’s right for you.
In this Episode:
[2:34] Uncovering team dynamics strengths and weaknesses
[4:42] Learn what kind of person doesn’t work out…and why
[7:30] Frameworks and red flags
[10:00] Onboarding and early experience norms reveal a lot
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 hours of CME, learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, special connections, prior experience, or a pay cut
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 124 – Five Ways to Ask About Workplace Culture in a Job Interview
Hey there, welcome back. Today we’re going to be talking about how to ask about and actually learn something valuable about workplace culture.
In a job interview, this is a really common question a hot topic, among people who are thinking about taking a new position a new role working in a new group, whether it’s within your current company or current hospital system, or maybe a bigger move a bigger geographic move on in a totally different type of role.
And a different type of organization can really bring a lot of change within the workplace culture. So to ask about it, and to understand what might be the best fit for you. This is a thing that people have a hard time doing.
Obviously, it’s easy if you’re mistreated by the people that you’re interviewing with, if they show a lack of respect for you or your time, and you otherwise have some interpersonal friction right off the bat, sometimes it can be very clear that it’s not the right fit.
But if you want to sort of peel back some layers and say like, what is it that that people are secretly or perhaps not secretly, but that’s not going to come through in an interview? You know, what are some of the ways in which people show up here and work together here?
And of course, it doesn’t mean that it’s all bad, right? It may be toxic and may not be toxic, it might just be not the right fit for you? And how are you going to find this out during a job interview?
So I have five questions for you. And I wouldn’t recommend necessarily to ask all five, you probably don’t have time for that. Although if you’re meeting with multiple people, or in multiple rounds of interviews, then maybe you do and it’s it is useful, I think, to try to find out more about the workplace culture.
Also try to phrase your questions in a way that shows that you are thoughtful, and you’re really being mindful about the right fit for you. Because they are investing in whomever they extend this job offer to they will want to retain you. And they’ll want you to work out. So you want to work out.
So you ask these questions in a way that’s hopefully quite helpful to you. But also, it will probably be impressive to the interviewer so that they know that you know, you’re taking this seriously and being thoughtful, and that you’re not coming from a place of desperation, right? You really you want to understand what’s it like to work there?
Okay, so I’m gonna dive in five options, ways to find out about company culture.
Number one, ask what are the biggest strengths of the team dynamics here. Or you can ask the flip, what are the biggest challenges to the team dynamics here. And of course, if you have time, you could have this just all as one conversation.
So it’s sort of asking about company culture, but you’re trying to drill down on what is best about the way in which the team works together.
And also what has room for improvement. And when you hear people reflect on these things, it will give you some ideas about, you know, the, if they’re struggling to come up with something, you can make an assessment about that, if the things that come most readily to mind are not necessarily the things you’re hoping to hear or the environment in which you want to be working, you can make an assessment about that.
What are the biggest strengths or challenges to the team dynamics here?
Okay, number two, what are the hallmarks of people who have been most successful at this company? You’re not asking about any specific people, or the work product or the deliverables necessarily, are the achievements that they had.
But something that’s more open ended, and you may want a different term, perhaps it’s not hallmarks, but, you know, I’m really trying to get to the phenotype of success here, right? What is the kind of person who is most successful at this company, but actually, really not the kind of person but the, the kind of way in which that person can work?
Right. So what are some of the hallmarks? How would they describe the people who have been most successful there? This will be very interesting, again, to listen to the responses, because the kinds of things that they describe are the characteristics, right, they’re sort of the, the adjectives, if you will, that would be used to label a person who’s successful at that company.
And then you can make your own assessment about whether or not you possess those same traits or whether you aspire to or whether it that’s something that paints a picture that’s maybe not consistent with the kind of workplace that you want
A related third option is to ask when someone is not successful here. What are some of the reasons I love this question? Because it’s very easy, you know, always to talk about what’s good, right? The strengths the glowing, but when someone is not successful, and again, you’re not asking about any particular person.
But if when people are not successful, assuming some people won’t, and they’ll move on, or there’s turnover, you know, again, what are the reasons for that? And listen to this, you know, obviously with a grain of salt, because of course, you’re not getting the point of view of the people who have moved on.
But what you are getting is the point of view of the people who are within that workplace, and what they viewed to be the sort of, you know, the adjectives a description of the kind of person who’s not going to cut it there. And what are they saying?
And this will give you, I think, a lot of insight into how they describe that person. And are they focused more on again, their, their productivity, their metrics of success? Is it more about their interpersonal relationships? Is it something to do with something that feels less tangible to you?
Right? Like they, they weren’t able to, you know, understand the communication style, or they weren’t able to understand the, you know, the expectations in terms of you know, how hard people are working, or, you know, they had personal boundaries that were in conflict with their boss’s expectations, and you probably won’t get anything that is explicitly described in those terms, but beyond the listen out for like, what are they really describing here?
And are they describing something that you feel like? If in your mind, you’re almost wanting to jump to that person, that imaginary persons defense that you don’t know? Then you may wonder, you know, are they describing something that is going to essentially be an expectation, once you’ve joined? That’s not the right expectation for you?
Okay, number four, kind of shifting gears a little bit here, you can ask, how does the company ensure transparent communication between leadership and the rest of the teams or vice versa? And you can tweak this language a little bit?
Of course, you know, if you if you wouldn’t call your places of work companies, because they’re their hospitals or healthcare systems or organizations, however it is it you’d want phrase it?
And maybe you wouldn’t say, between leaderships and teams, you might have different words. But when you’re trying to think about how does the company in short, transparent communication between leaderships and teams, there’s so much to unpack here it is, it can be very instructive, right, you can understand whether or not the company has processes in place for communication.
That’s a basic one, right? It’s very, very difficult to be successful at what you’re doing, if you’re not having a really clear understanding of what the organization expects from you. And a lot of people, especially in the corporate world, this is a this is a problem.
This is where there is a breakdown between what you think you’ve been hired to do, and what the company really wants you to do, and how you can be successful, how you can ensure that you hear about new news changes in direction, a lot of times things get kind of lost in that leadership group, or maybe senior management, and doesn’t really trickle down to boots on the ground. And so whomever it is that you are there, whether you will be a manager or a leader or boots on the ground, it’s important to understand what the communication expectations are.
But even more important to understand whether or not they even have a paradigm for that. If they don’t, I would be concerned that to me is a little bit of a red flag, if there’s not a clear way to understand what you, you know, when and how you get information, and when and how you should provide information up the chain.
If there’s no paradigm for doing that, that can often be a recipe for confusion and disappointment. So not only can you learn if they have a sort of framework for doing so, but then you can also hear about what it is.
And again, there are some things that depending upon context might be red flags, for example, if they say oh, you know, this is situation dependent, or its leader dependent, what they’re really saying is they don’t have a framework for it.
And that might be okay. And it’s up to you, I think to decide based on the context and the kind of work that you’re doing.
But it is usually pretty revealing as to whether or not people who work there and specifically the people who are interviewing you, so who likely would be your peers, or your boss or your manager otherwise, understand how communication cascades occur.
Communication and clarity around roles and responsibilities and goals and aspirations and all of that what success looks like for the organization and therefore what does success look like for you? These are really important things and if there’s not a clear way for that to be, you know, understood and rolled out or for information, to move by directionally both ways that that can be bad news.
All right, the fifth one is asking them how to describe or how they would describe the onboarding process, or the experience of someone in the first three months or six months, you know, you can choose the timeframe that you think is so important.
But if you ask about the onboarding process, or the early experience, you will get a lot of information about whether or not you are likely to be supported and trained, you know, and provided with information that you need, are you just going to be thrown in in the deep end?
And again, it’s up to you to decide whether this is the right fit for you. And of course, it varies, you know, corporate jobs tend to have a lot more of sort of formal onboarding, and what you’re really learning policies and procedures and norms within the company.
There’s a lot of pre-existing training, there’s compliance things to do. And so that that will likely occur, right? But understanding whether or not there is a way for you really even just to get like basic orientation to learn your way around, how do we do things around here?
Will you have an assigned mentor? Or buddy or what have you, you know, while you’re kind of getting your bearings? How will you be evaluated? Who can you go to for help?
Those kinds of questions, and I wouldn’t ask those, those questions, I try to start big picture, which is why I’m giving you really big picture questions, because they ought to be able to describe this for you.
And if they have to fish or think about the details of what an onboarding process even is, or looks like, or what the experience is for someone in the first couple of months, I think that might be a red flag.
And again, it’s obviously jobs are very different companies are different workplaces are different. You my listeners are different. So this is about evaluating fit.
But that is a really great way and it again reveals something about the culture, is it more of a, you know, a culture that is very transparent, and information, perhaps very active in supporting its employees?
Or is it more of a place of where they’re very hands off, and you’re expected to come in, figure it out, and make a contribution. And if you need help, you know, you raise your hand rather than somebody else, kind of check in on you.
And of course, you know, everyone’s personality is different. What you’re going to like, what someone else is gonna like is going to be different, but finding out how they describe that is really instructive.
Before I wrap, so those are five, I’m gonna give you a bonus, this one I have mixed feelings about because I know it has backfired. It can backfire in its delivery. And it can backfire. depending really on you know who you’re speaking to. And if they have preconceived biases about what you mean by this right, this question, I think, is it’s a fact-finding question.
And I think it’s, frankly, an appropriate one, but I’ll read it, and then I’ll let you be the judge. So as a bonus, to try to understand more deeply the company culture, you could ask, what is the company’s philosophy about work life balance? Or some permutation? Like, what are the opportunities for flexible work arrangements?
Now those two things are they’re not synonyms. When you think about work life balance you, you may or may not be thinking about flexible work arrangements and you know, autonomy over your schedule, or what have you. It does mean different things for different people. And I can’t make it one size fits all for, for my audience, so I just, I’m putting the broad brushstrokes out there.
But what you will find, typically here is, if it’s something that’s well embedded in the culture, they will have, you know, not only easy answers to this, but probably policies, or even names of those policies, like yes, this is our, you know, I don’t, I’m not I’m not creative enough today to make up a name for the policy or to make up a name for the framework that they use.
But if they have things in place that are intended to really support that they’ll have pretty readily available answers, right?
This isn’t something they should have to stop and think about. They should be able to describe it. Well. If they don’t, then they may kind of struggle for Well, I mean, this is, you know, we, it’s on everybody’s responsibility to maintain their resiliency and so forth. I mean, if you’re getting that kind of an answer, that’s a different answer.
The other thing is, you know, depending upon whether what they describe is something that feels to you like it would support your view your philosophy of work life balance, or does it feel like something that feels a little bit less connected, for example, you know, I’ve heard lots of clinicians joking about how they’ll have these mandatory Saturday wellness retreats, you know, which is almost an oxymoron in and of itself, but we Maybe some people love those.
So again, I’m not judging the answer. I’m just saying, Here’s the question. Now, for the folks for whom this question has backfired. I would actually argue, maybe as has not right?
Because if what you get is someone who’s really put off by you having asked that question, I think that’s your answer, right? So you already know, a little bit because if they’re interviewing you, presumably they are a key stakeholder with whom you will be interacting, right?
They’re probably not a random person off the company street. So if you have someone who’s off put by you, having asked that question, that’s probably extremely informative. That may backfire in the sense that you may not be offered the job, or that you might get some negative feedback around that.
But I would say that’s a really valuable answer. And if it’s something that was important to you, and I’m assuming it is, if you chose to ask it, then that place might not be the right fit for you. So it’s really kind of all’s well, that ends well.
But the reason I put that little note around it is, if this is not something that’s important to you, I wouldn’t recommend that you ask it because it is the kind of thing where if it’s not actually important to you, and you want to take the job and kind of regardless of that, then I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t ask it because it will make it sound like it’s important to you and perhaps you are interviewing at a place that is really not focused on that at all.
And that’s okay with you. And it’s totally aligned with your professional objectives and your plans for your life. And, you know, like that’s what you want eyes wide open. If that’s the case, don’t ask it.
Don’t risk that is misinterpreted, why bring up something just to waste essentially some time when you could be asking something else that would provide more valuable information to you. So that’s my that’s my bonus and my perspective on the bonus.
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So I hope these questions are helpful to you to think about how you will actually learn something about the company culture, the organizational culture, in your next job interviews so you can have a better idea of whether or not that’s the right place for you whether it’s a good fit.
That’s it for today. Bye for now.
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