How to Assess Organizational Culture in an Interview

Culture Eats . . . Everything

If you want to hear the most generic, meaningless string of buzzwords ever, ask a leader to describe their organization’s culture to a funder, potential partner, or employment candidate. Ok, maybe that’s a cynical over-generalization. Or maybe it’s not. It is legitimately difficult to identify and describe an organization’s culture. Do a Google image search for “organizational culture iceberg” and you’ll see what I mean. Organization’s have professed missions, visions, and values. They have documented policies and procedures. Whether they walk that talk is a whole other question.

What makes up an organization’s culture is its behavior, reactions, norms, traditions, incentives, and relationships.

What’s more, culture is taken for granted. A fish doesn’t know it’s in water . . . until it’s not. In my experience, the easiest way to identify and describe an organization’s culture is in contrast to another’s. This becomes most apparent when we change jobs, which is happening a lot lately.

Job descriptions can be like advertisements – inspirational and aspirational. They describe the organization’s best intentions for what the work will be, how it will unfold, what role you may play in it, if the organization and team all functioned according to these aspirations. But – womp, womp – that’s rarely the case. Drucker famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. I’m here to say that culture eats everything!

What determines the look and feel of a job is not the job title or description but the organization’s culture. 

Asking Targeted Questions

For years, I’ve advised my students to be thoughtful and creative during hiring processes so they can, to the extent possible, learn about an organization’s culture and base their decision on that. In a recent article, Forbes suggested five ways to learn about organizational culture before accepting a job:

1. Research the organization
2. Seek out employee feedback
3. Ask about company culture during the interview
4. Notice how you were treated during the process
5. Pay attention to surroundings

It’s the third strategy that I’d like to address. The author suggests jobseekers ask generic questions like, “How would you describe the company culture?” and “How would you describe the work environment?” Logical, but unlikely to elicit any insightful (or authentic) responses, in my opinion. A better question might be, “How does this organization’s culture compare to others you’ve worked in?” or, as the author also suggests, “What makes this company’s culture unique?”

But I want to go deeper. Questions are my thing. I love a good question. I suggest these two strategies:

1. Instead of asking about the values that underlie an organizational culture, ask about the behaviors that would embody those values.

For example, if you want to work in a collaborative culture, rather than asking whether the organization values collaboration (what hiring manager is going to say no?!), identify what you want collaboration to look like, and ask if it exists. For example, “What cross-functional or cross-departmental teams exist and who gets to participate on them?”

Or to gauge how hierarchical an organization is and how valued its junior level employees are, you could ask, “Where did the idea for the organization’s most recent innovation originate? Who sparked the idea and who put shape to it?” instead of asking “Are there opportunities for junior level staff to contribute to problem-solving and design?”

2. Instead of asking if the organization values something that seems universally valuable, ask them about behaviors that embody a competing value. Rather than asking them to endorse a value no manager in their right might would reject, ask them how they feel about a value that is opposite of or in tension with the one you desire.

If you want to work in an organization that’s innovative and creative, which every organization might aspire to be, ask them how they feel about using tried and true best practices or how they mitigate risk. That might give more honest insight into how they feel about creativity and experimentation.

Every organization values work-life balance, to some degree. Or, at least they have to say they do. Try asking, “What does it look like here when employees go above and beyond?”

For more examples of competing values, see this post.

The Bottom Line

Organizational culture is difficult to identify and describe. Instead of asking about this amorphous thing called “culture,” ask about the behaviors, norms, and decisions that reveal culture. This requires that candidates have a good understanding of what they value and what type of work experience they want.