Culture fit is everything!
Candidates ARE The Brand!
The Creative & Marketing Industry continues to be in flux.
Yet, open positions, stitched from past roles, linger for months or years, only to be revamped and reposted. Candidates cast wide nets, applying for 48 jobs to land one interview—doubling the standard. Companies believe their requirements are realistic, while candidates hustle to get noticed. Everyone asks me the same thing: “What is going on!??”
“Culture alignment: The ultimate power move in hiring and job hunting.”
CREATIVE LEADERS & HIRING MANAGERS
“Your job description is not a candidate wishlist—it’s a creative Brief that needs a reality check.”
Stop the Copy-Paste Culture in Job Descriptions! Aligning on culture fit in your future hire starts with the job description, so stop recycling those JDs!
Constructing a job description is like branding - it requires a holistic view and understanding of the current landscape of your company, your brand, and your team’s actual needs. Cutting and pasting job descriptions together leads to misaligned matches because the candidates you say you need may not exist in the market. Here’s how to do it right:
Make a list of the core competencies (e.g., skills, requirements, and duties) that will drive success in the role.
Make a list of the required candidate attributes that align with your company culture.
Run a Stack Rank exercise with your director, team, or recruiter to ensure your wish list is aligned with the company's duties and expectations and the current team culture.
Consult with a seasoned recruiter to make sure your job description is reflected in your candidate wish list candidate and reflects the current talent pool.
Edit based on feedback, repeat steps 1-4, and publish!
Exclusive: Keva Dine Agency & OfiOfo Collaboration: An offsite workshop for building team culture.
Building team culture is so important.
Culture is often hard to pin down and define in words—but it’s easy to feel and experience. We express culture in our communication, collaboration, and leadership interactions, as well as through a plethora of intangible things - it’s hard to pin down.
Inspired by this challenge, I collaborated with leadership and growth experts Kirsten Ludwig and Christina Danton of OfiOfo on a three-part offsite workshop to build team culture. This offsite workshop activity is designed to define, align, and assist in building your team culture.
⤵ ⤵ Rally your team, carve out time and space, and dig in!
EXCLUSIVE WORKSHOP CREATED JUST FOR YOU!
JOB SEEKERS & CAREER DREAMERS
“How to align on culture for your next Job: Stack Rank it!”
If you click apply to every job post that seems like a fit without first referring to your Stack Ranking List - you are wasting your time (and theirs)! Stack ranking is a method for ranking a list of options based on their relative importance - it compares the options against each other subjectively to put them in order from first to last place.
Plus, every time you click that “like” button, tag yourself in the comments, or DM that hiring manager/recruiter without doing the below - you are also wrecking your Personal Brand.
Don’t have a Stack Rank List for your dream job? Stop everything and do this exercise. You can use stickie notes, app, a whiteboard, or a pad of paper - the method does not matter as long as it’s visible and accessible.
List out no more than 15 items on your “wish list”
Now break your list up into two sections:
Non-Negotiable (mark with a *)
Nice to haves (mark with a +)
Read, edit, reorg.
Read it again.
Run the exercise with a trusted friend/partner.
Print it out.
Read it every day.
Before you hit submit, run your Stack Rank List against that job post.
Read your Stack Rank List right after you read that job post. Then re-read it and ask yourself “Am I aligned for this role? For this company culture?” If the answer is yes, proceed. If it’s a maybe or you hesitate, move on.
DO NOT APPLY if the role+company doesn’t check at least 70% of your list items.
Aligning on culture fit starts right here - with you, your Stack Rank List, and the next set of actions you take.
Here’s a target job/company Stack Rank List that I helped a job seeker create recently.
Stack Rank Order the below:
1. Title +
2. Money*
3. New Skills: Products: Space+
4. Grow of Team*
5. Growth of Self*
6. Good Manager*
7. Company Culture*
8. Autonomy: Life Balance*
9. Challenge*
10. Family*
11. Stability+
NOTES:
- What are the things that matter
- What am I not willing to give up
- Pay based on market, not zip
- M R P
- This is my market rate
- Keva
CEO | The Keva Dine Agency
The Expert Creative Recruiter with 23 Years' Experience Placing Top Talent | Driving Client Success & Revenue Growth! #BFFRecruiter