The central goal of any job interview is to enable an interviewer to appraise a job candidate's potential to culturally fit into their organization. Recruiters and hiring managers make every effort to identify the right candidates for an organization, and one of the most important criterion is to align the applicant to the company customs or uncover a mismatch.

Many questionnaires are designed to determine the characteristics of the ideal candidate for the organization. During the interview, interaction is a key element to candidate selection. Applicants of any age must fully exhibit that they not only meet the qualifications for the position, but also that they are a good match, culturally, with the company's existing environment.

In the world of employment, the daily work environment of an organization envelops employees with its culture. By some definitions, a company's way of life is encompasses the congruent principles, viewpoints, modes, and activities shared by the group of people who work there. Like individuals, companies have values too. Traditionally, company culture and values is defined by its founder, its leaders, and its management staff. Therefore, hiring managers want to identify the "best fit" for their climate - such as formal and conservative, or the opposite.

Personal values are an integral part of the culture fit interview process. These values can range from creativity and innovation to communication abilities. A culture fit interview will be designed to include personality characteristic probing questions. An example would be "What do you want out of your life?"

The culture fit interview is deliberately designed to find out about your work style and how it fits the company. An example would be "Are you a team oriented person or do you prefer to work alone?" If you are a person who prefers to work alone most of the time, then you would not fit into a "team work" filled environment.

Culture fit interviews can also be tied directly to competency by incorporating culture based questions into a competency model interview. This type of type of practice matches the grouped competencies desired by the company with the candidate's grouped competencies. Competency models are constructed from the corporation's culture or desired - such as customer service abilities and team work.

Unfortunately, there are not right or wrong answers to questions given in a culture fit interview. So, it is best to answer each question with the personal characteristics - viewpoints, ethics, and standards that best suit you.

C.A. Stapleton, A.S., B.S., M.B.A., is an experienced professional career consultant, mentor, and rsum/ biographical writer. Get more information @ http://www.vet2work.com or http://www.naturallysilver.com Copyright. All rights reserved Worldwide.