An academic analysis of cultural assessment tools available to organizations and hiring managers seeking to use culture as a selection criteria for applicants.

1. Culture Research:
Celectiv
Sophie Peck • July 2017
© Celectiv

2. Overview
What is culture?
● How is it formed?
● Why is it important?
Lit Review
● Interesting findings on different
approaches to culture in the workplace
Competitor Research
● How is this model being employed
elsewhere?
Issues & Questions
● Resultant concerns, and questions for
moving forward

3. What is culture?
Anthropologically
● "a system of inherited conceptions
expressed in symbolic forms by means of
which men communicate, perpetuate, and
develop their knowledge about and
attitudes toward life." Geertz (1973)
● The totality of a society’s (or group’s)
collective (learned) behaviors, ideas, belief
systems, rituals, practices, traditions,
values and forms of knowledge, which
distinguishes them from another group.
How is it formed?
- Culture is always representative of a learned
pattern, often passed down generationally
through the communication of symbols that
become naturalized.
- Cultural diffusion theory suggests that
transmission is largely instinctive, acting like an
autonomous force that exerts itself organically on
a group and is liable to change form over time.
- Different arguments and evidence exist for either
‘top-down’, ‘bottom-up’, or ‘horizontal’ methods of
diffusion, as well the impact of endogenous and
exogenous factors.

4. John Bodley, Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States and the Global System (1994)
Culture is made up of at least three
components:
● what people think
● what they do
● and the material products they produce
Here is where the disconnect between VALUES and
BEHAVIOR become important. Bodley argues that there
is a vast difference between what people think they
ought to do, and what they actually do, which is
supported by much ethnographic research.
Often the problem with working alongside human
subjects or interlocutors is that there are frequent
discrepancies between what we say and how we act, or
what we know is best for us vs. where our priorities lie
and how they might shift over time.
Self-selected assessment modelling needs to keep that
in mind and explore ways to mitigate the effects.

5. Why is it important?
In general
● Tracing the development and
lived-experience of different cultures
allows us to gain insight into how
patterns of behavior change over
time, as well as the limits of
individual intervention into collective
phenomena out of our control
● Provides a basis from which to
understand any human universals
In the workplace
● Attention to culture in the workplace
can help us to identify how values
relate to productivity, as well as the
important inclusion of active or
deliberate behaviors and practices,
vs. ingrained patterns of tradition
(“that’s just how things are done
here”)

6. Relevant Research Findings:
Fischer-Wright and Logan, Tribal Leadership:
Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving
Organization (2008)
● “Tribes form all the time. What makes workplace
tribes a little different is their staying power. Even if
you leave a company, you'll probably keep in touch
with some of the people you worked with.”
● “Designating someone as the leader or head of an
organization doesn't mean that he or she is the tribal
leader. Most of the time, tribal leaders are the silent
face behind the leadership... It's usually obvious who
is not the leader, but it's often harder to figure out who
is the leader...It's harder at the earlier stages because
there may not be a tribal leader; sometimes, there are
just a lot of subversive elements at work.”

7. Relevant Research Findings:
Kyser, Diana C. and Hill, Theodore, Through the
Looking Glass: Company Culture As a Reflection of
Founder Personality in Entrepreneurial
Organizations (September 10, 2016).
● Reviews many key studies on the different effects
that founding partners and ‘architects’ of
organizations have on the overall culture of their
company, tracing the impact overtime.
Particularly interesting in that their results yield a
lot of weight behind ‘aggregate personality’ on the
development of workplace culture.
“Using ethnographic, psychological and organizational
data from the founders and employees of four small
firms from multiple industries, we find that, contrary to
ASA and P-O predictions, aggregate personality seems
to mediate the effect of founder personality on culture.
At the same time, the direct impact of founder
personality seems to be enhanced by intentional efforts
to build culture and by sheer force of personality.”

8. Competitor Product Research

9. Affintus
Key Features
● Pre-hire assessment and job-matching tools
● Candidates take an assessment during
application process to identify cognitive, work
style, and work culture preferences. Candidates
are scored and ranked against profile, and
behavioral interview questions finish out the
hiring process.
● http://www.affintus.com/how-it-works/

10. Pomello
Key features
● 10-minute culture surveys and analytics predict
hiring outcomes such as performance and
turnover. Company culture analytics
● Ability to screen current as well as potential
employees for fit
● Highly focused data gathering, attention to the
different ‘layers’ of culture - i.e team or
department culture as something different to the
workplace as a whole
● https://www.pomello.com/product

11. TalentRocket
Key Features
● UK based, do not appear to be involved
with the US market
● Primarily a database of companies,
putting uniqueness of each company
culture front and center
● https://talentrocket.co.uk/for-companies

12. TalentRocket’s ThriveMap
Key Features
● Algorithmic measurement of ‘work style’
(and mapping preference), team design,
and team performance.
● Hire for fit surveys, interviews, aptitude
tests, psychometric testing and applicant
tracking system.
● https://getthrivemap.com/

13. Attention Areas

14. Moving forward:
Questions that need to be
asked and answered:
● What makes Celectiv different?
● Executive search or larger than that?
● Who is the market? Not just in terms of HR Manager
or Exec. but target industry.
● How will the product adapt to different interpretations
of what ‘culture’ is between different companies? This
needs to be the starting point, because the experience
and perception of culture is vastly different all the way
down, and in different industries.
● How are terms like ‘value’ and ‘success’ defined
qualitatively? Fiscal success is different to creating a
‘desirable’ company: many people will be willing to
overlook a relatively low initial equity / stability to work
for a company with a certain reputable culture.
● Is it always just a focus on the positive or aspirational
vs. negative, or issues to be addressed, in order for a
company to be successful?
● Current application of culture seems to collapse the
distinction between ‘values’ (individual and/or
organizational), and work style preference - needs a
more precise definition.
● In terms of assessment or placement, what if
someone doesn’t know what their preferred work
culture looks like? What if the culture they prefer isn’t
necessarily the culture that they perform best in?
● Similarly, how can we track aspiration vs. actual
company cultures? Sometimes the CEO or founders
are not the best people to determine what company
culture is, what methods can be used to investigate
how culture operates on a larger scale?

15. Summary
1. Culture fit is well proven to be a
valuable source of data for job
matching
2. Many companies have already
developed products that
prioritize culture fit
3. What makes Celectiv stand
out?