Organizations spend a lot of money on trying to build better teams, better culture and better communication in an attempt to build better engagement. Companies want their workplaces to be more warm and fuzzy, friendly and personal so that employees might connect better with their work, coworkers and managers. And yet these same companies still hire using the most impersonal (and broken) model available: ARIH (Advertise-Résumé-Interview-Hire).
Advertising job duties (instead of desired personal qualities), selecting shortlist candidates based on impersonal stuff written on paper (applications and résumés), asking interviewees questions from a prepared list of impersonal questions and then hiring based on who was best able to remain cool and detached from stress during the interview seems like a surefire strategy to hire cold and impersonal people. All you create are workplaces that make it difficult to build organic teams and a sense of personal connection to the work.
Still, companies complain about employee disengagement, employees who don’t feel a connection to the mission of the company, employees who lack any sense that their work matters, employees who don’t really like or respect their co-workers or their boss. Yet these same companies continue to use the detached approach to hire people who they will later complain aren't connected to their work.
If the whole hiring process is based on disconnect, is it really a surprise that your people end up disconnected from their work, boss and workplace? Really?
If you want to change your culture and build your team organically, you must first change up those who do the hiring, conduct the interviews and set the tone for the expectations of the new employee. The first point of contact of most organizations is Human Resources and it needs to change.
Start hiring personable HR people who are prepared to have side-by-side conversations with potential employees instead of the adversarial model of job-candidate facing the power-panel of intimidating interviewers. Get rid of the "power trip" and start finding ways to make connections with candidates. Start building relationships instead of attempting to justify your job.
If you want to attract people who connect naturally to other people, their work and contribute to a warmer culture, you need to model that behavior for every new employee right from the very first contact with your company.
A couple of ideas that attract a completely different candidate can be found here http://buildingabetterworkplace.com/?p=971 Sadly, most HR people would find a million reasons why it can't be done that way because it is out of their comfort zone. But it can be done and is being done. And it works.
If you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to keep getting what you've always gotten.
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Kevin Burns - Workplace Expert and Speaker
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