Company culture is a hard thing to pin down. Most of us have a basic understanding of what people mean when they talk about it, but it’s not an easily definable or traceable thing. You might have read some vague definitions that describe company culture as the collective “vision, values, and assumptions” upheld throughout an organization. But sometimes company culture simply describes how it feels to work at a particular organization. Is the work environment relaxed and aloof or aggressive and competitive? Encouraging or demanding? Team oriented or individualistic?
If you’ve ever watched your boss take credit for your work and gotten a shrugging “that’s just the way things are done here” response, that’s one manifestation of company culture. Another might be how companies deal with deadlines. Are you constantly rushing things out or do you have time to properly develop and tweak the final product?
The idea of company culture seeps into pop culture frequently too. On Mad Men, viewers get a sense of what it might have been like to work within the toxic misogyny of the male-dominated advertising industry in the 1960s. By contrast, on a show like HBO’s Silicon Valley we’re instead laughing at the awkward scrappiness of nerdy millennial start-up culture.
Ultimately, young people drive company culture into new generations, and millennials have already taken hold of offices around the world. According to a study published by the business investigative firm Intelligence Group published in 2014: 88% of millennials want to experience a collaborative instead of competitive culture at work, 74% want flexible work hours, and 79% want bosses to take the role of a coach or mentor.
Even if it’s not obvious or executed intentionally, all companies have a culture, and it’s an important factor in any job hunt. The biggest problem? It’s usually difficult to get an accurate understanding of a company’s culture without experiencing it first hand. Trying to get a sense of company culture during an office visit or interview is kind of like wondering if the neighbors are loud during an apartment hunt: you’ll have to just ask or hear it for yourself. And yet, recruiters should and do heavily consider the importance and relevance of a company’s culture when searching for potential placements. They call it “cultural fit,” and when you’re sitting down with a recruiter or interviewer, they’re trying to get a sense of whether or not you’ll be a square peg to their round hole or if you’ll be able to gel naturally with the team.
It’s important to remember that company culture is pliable but ingrained. When Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer took hold of the company in 2012 she executed a shocking decree that threw the struggling web behemoth into a spin: she banned employees from working at home. The move was big news. Working from home was a long-held value at Yahoo! That’s company culture. And Mayer’s newsworthy decision shows just how important it can be.
If you’re worried that you won’t be able to get along at an office, it’s worth thinking carefully about what’s making you apprehensive and investigating the issue further. You might want to present yourself as driven but easy-going during an interview, but you definitely don’t want to find yourself in a position of feeling constantly against the grain once you’ve landed the job.
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