This company attributes their low turnover rate to a 'culture interview'

Organizations have always been good at hiring the right candidates for a job, but they may need to start thinking about whether they're hiring the best people for their company's culture.

For over a decade, sampling equipment company Sentry Equipment has made improving their workplace culture a pivotal part of their recruiting strategy. They've done this by dedicating an entire portion of their interview process to traditionally softer skills, in what they've referred to as a "culture interview" — and every prospective applicant has to participate if they hope to be hired.  

"Obviously we need and want someone that's going to have the technical skill set to do the job and be successful in the role," says Sentry HR director Mikaela Gitto. "But we also want to make sure that they have an extra set of skills, like accountability and teamwork and collaboration. So we started doing culture interviews."

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The first step for any prospective Sentry employee is to go through an HR screening, which is just a formal overview and assessment of the job seeker's experience and hard skills. Then, before even meeting with the hiring manager, the applicant goes through the 45-minute culture interview, in which Gitto is joined by active Sentry employees from different departments. This  ensures not only objectivity, but compatibility with employees outside the applicant's future team.

The culture interview includes interpersonal, behavioral or situational-based questions that have been designed around Sentry's core tenets. For example, an applicant may be asked about something they've done successfully that they never want to do again, or to describe a time when working with others on a task produced something more successful than if they'd done it on their own. The applicant must pass this interview in order to progress to the next stage, which includes the hiring manager.  

"For us, it's not something we're willing to compromise on," Gitto says. "We don't want the hiring manager to meet them and fall in love with their skill set and find ourselves in a back and forth with discussions of exceptions. It's hard, but there are no exceptions."

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Unlike most companies, Sentry is employee-owned, which means that a significant portion of the company's shares are owned by its workers. And while that may create a bigger incentive to cultivate a good company culture, employees wanting to work with colleagues they enjoy is not a unique sentiment. In fact, 81% of workers consider corporate culture important, according to a report from learning and development company UJJI, with 51% of college graduates prioritizing company culture in their job search. Over half of employees would take a job with a competitor if the new company had a better culture, the report found, with 73% of executives having left a job for this reason. 

"A bad company culture drives employees to feel like they don't belong there," Gitto says. "But when an organization fits employees' values and everyone is working towards the same goal, it makes people want to stay." 

Sentry has seen the benefits within its own ranks. Since the implementation of the culture interview, the organization has maintained an average tenure of over six years, which is almost double the national average reported by the Department of Labor Statistics. 

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"We actually have a bigger issue of people over-committing and wanting to help too much," Gitto says. "Everyone is so helpful and willing to just jump in because everyone wants to see the company thrive." 

That being said, focusing on company culture in the way Sentry has come with a number of short-term drawbacks, Gitto warns. Turning down skilled and available talent because they aren't the right culture fit could either exacerbate existing talent shortages or create new ones. The strategy is intended to create a long-term solution comes with its own series of challenges.   

"I always tell anyone looking to make the shift organizationally that it's going to be really hard at first," she says. "HR managers are going to feel like they're not filling roles as fast, which is true. Managers are going to start getting antsy and not want to stay the course, but please stay the course. It's going to be a little rough in the beginning, but then I promise it pays off."