“How do you know if a company’s culture is good?”
Last week, a friend who’s looking for a new job asked me this. She’d been doing a few interviews, and was trying to figure out what questions to ask during her interviews to discern if a potential employer’s workplace culture was healthy.
In each interview, she’d ask a version of: “What’s it like to work here?”
Without fail, the person on the other side of the table would tell her: “It’s great!”
But is it really?
How do you know if a company’s culture is what they say it is?
Instead of asking “What’s it like to work here?” these five questions are what I recommended she ask at the end of her next interview…
#1: When is the last time you had a 4-hour block of uninterrupted time?
Our most productive, creative work happens when we have a large block of uninterrupted time. Yet how many workplaces make that a reality regularly for their employees? Ask a question about the last time your interviewer had an uninterrupted period of time to get work done and listen closely to the answer. Your interviewer may scoff and tell you: “We like to stay busy, busy, busy — meetings all the time, messages constantly on Slack…” Or she may sit there, a little stumped by the question, before slowly answering: “Hmmm… I’m not sure.” Both bring to light a clear truth: The company does not have a culture that values a calm environment where employees’ time is protected for them to do real work.