Stop Asking About Company Culture During Interviews

And start asking questions about this instead.

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates over the course of my human resources career and I can’t remember the last time I made it through an interview without a candidate asking me:

“How would you describe the company culture?”

“Culture” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2014 and, since then, it has quickly become a buzzword in organizational development. Some companies pride themselves on having a ‘family-oriented culture’ while others relish their ‘results-driven culture.’

But what exactly is ‘company culture,’ and how do we define it?

Every year Fortune publishes its list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. The list is determined by two components according to Fortune’s methodology:

1. “85% is based on what employees report about their experiences of trust and reaching their full human potential as part of their organization.”
2. The remaining 15% includes “an assessment of all employees’ daily experiences of the company’s values, people’s ability to contribute new ideas, and the effectiveness of their leaders, to ensure they’re consistently experienced.”

After some number-crunching, Fortune publishes its top 100 alongside information about perks offered and various employee testimonials.

So, what is all this measuring? I think most people would say that all these pieces together measure a company’s overall culture.

For example, Hilton, ranked #1 by Fortune in 2020, won the top spot based on its commitment to:

“extending its parental leave policy, guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid time off for new mothers, and four for fathers and adoptive parents.

The company also partnered with the startup Milk Stork, enabling team members to easily ship or carry breast milk when traveling for work, for free. 2020 will also see the continued rollout of a new employee stock purchase program — at all levels of the company, regardless of position.

And Hilton employees continue to enjoy a travel program that allows team members to become customers themselves at locations around the world at highly discounted rates.”

Hilton CEO, Chris Nassetta, is quoted in the report as saying, “There’s nothing I’m prouder of in my career than what we’ve done with this culture.”

There’s that word again — culture.

But, if I’m a jobseeker, are these things what I really, truly care most about?

Sure, these are great benefits that some of us would very much like to have. But are paid leave policies, employee stock purchase programs, or travel discounts the best data points to help me figure out whether or not I fit within Hilton’s culture?

Might I care more about the day-to-day experiences I’ll have at work than these perks I’ll only use every once and awhile?

What are the people like? Will the work will be challenging and fulfilling? Will my boss will care about me as a person?

These rankings don’t tell me anything about that. They don’t tell me anything meaningful about what it’s really like to work within Hilton’s culture.

Marcus Buckingham explores this in his latest book, Nine Lies About Work:

“When people ask you what it’s ‘really like’ to work at your company, you immediately know you’re not going to tell them about the solar panels and the cafeteria, but about what it’s really like.

You’ll get real and talk about how work is parceled out, whether many managers play favorites, how disputes get resolved, whether the real meeting happens only after the formal meeting is over, how people get promoted, how territorial teams are, how large the power distance is between senior leaders and everyone else, whether good news or bad news travels fastest, how much recognition there is, and whether performance or politics is most prized.”

I don’t know about you, but — forget about the ping-pong table and the beer fridge, this is the stuff I’m trying to ascertain in an interview.

Buckingham is known for his employee engagement research which found that there are 8 elements of our experience at work that matter most. These 8 are highly predictive of engagement and, therefore, of cultural fit.

And when he compared the results of said research from team-to-team and company-to-company, he found something quite interesting:

“They vary more team-to-team than they do company-to-company.

Any ideas — like culture — that rest on the assumption that our experience of a company is uniform, no matter where we sit, don’t hold up.

Any ideas — again, like the idea of culture — that rest on the assumption that our experience will vary company to company are incomplete because our experience will vary more within a company than between companies.

And any ideas — again, like the idea of culture — that rest on the assumption that this broad, unchanging company-ness is what defines our experience of work are simply wrong.”

In short, he found that “when people choose not to work somewhere, the somewhere isn’t a company, it’s a team.”

I think most of us intuitively know this. If I’m working on a ‘good’ team at a ‘bad’ company, I’ll probably stick around for as long as the team remains ‘good.’

But if I’m working at a ‘good’ company as part of a ‘bad’ team, I’m not going to be there for long because my experience at that company is only as good as the team around me.

Following this logic, if we assume that two employees on two different teams will very likely have widely different experiences despite working at the same company, then asking about company culture is a waste of time.

So, if we shouldn’t waste our time asking about culture, what should we be asking about in interviews? Buckingham says:

“Ask what the company does to build great teams.”

Cisco, which happens to be #4 on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2020, was the company where Buckingham set out to understand what the best teams looked like through his Best Teams Study.

The results revealed three key differences between the best teams and the rest of the teams. The best teams:

1. Harness the individual excellence of each team member by giving everyone the chance to use his/her strengths each day at work.
2. Unlock the collective experience of the team by ‘having each other’s backs.’
3. Do this in an environment of safety and trust built upon shared values.

Buckingham says, “This is why teams matter, and it’s why they matter much more than cultural plumage matters.”

The next time you’re interviewing with a new company, don’t bother asking about company culture. No one can meaningfully answer that question for you, anyway.

Instead, ask how they ensure everyone on the team has the chance to use his/her strengths each day.

Ask what they do to cultivate an environment of trust and safety among team members.

Ask them what they do to build and maintain great teams.

Not a member of Medium yet?

Join here to directly support my work and get access to every story on Medium. You can also subscribe to my free newsletter or connect with me on Linkedin.