Creating the working environment you want can be a challenge. Whether you are trying to get people to be innovative or to stick with what has worked before; create a collaborative workforce or one filled with strong individual rock stars; or, expand into new markets vs becoming the top company in a single market, you will have an easier time if you hire people who want to work the way you want them to work. How you recruit is one of the biggest factors in whether or not you get the organizational culture you want.

How do you find and hire the people you really want? Consider these adjustments to your recruiting process.

Write a realistic job announcement. One of the most important tools to help you attract the people you want is the job announcement, and it’s the tool that often gets the least attention. The more accurately you write it, though, the easier it will be to attract the people who have the mindset that is most important for you. Most job announcements are fairly generic and look more at the candidate’s past than at the job’s future. Consider how you might instead write a job announcement that more accurately reflects your expectations for an employee.

– Link the role to the business value of the organization. Let a candidate see how this job contributes to business success.

– You still let them know what technical skills they need. It does not matter how much the candidates’ personalities fit are if they do not have the essential skills for the job.

– Describe the expectation that an employee will contribute new ideas, some of which may be outside their normal job scope (for example, you may expect a designer to help identify new markets for their product).

– Identify how they should expect to collaborate with other business functions.

– Include any changes in the role that an employee should be prepared for, such as planned growth.

The goal is to attract employees who want to do what you want them to do.

Interview for the traits you need. The interview is a good opportunity to learn more about them than their degrees and job titles. Since most job applications do not ask about personal interests or other signs of their particular personality, the time to start learning about these is in the interview process (and preferably, early in the interview process). Look for signs that they will fit the culture you are trying to maintain or create, nit just through their speaking style, but also through examples of their past work or their hobbies. If they have started their own business, they could be a good choice for opening an office in a new market. If they climb mountains, that tells you about their appetite for risk. If they run marathons, that gives you a clue to their persistence. If they like to travel, they probably won’t mind traveling for work. Their CV may tell you what they have done, but the interviews are a great way to learn how they like to do it, and decide if that fits what you need.

Use onboarding to integrate them into the culture. During the recruiting process you should be describing how you think works gets done best within the culture you want, and the onboarding process is a chance to get down into the details. Show your new employee the organizational chart, then explain how work really gets done: who they need to talk to in order to make things happen, who the real experts are on different topics. Help them make the connections they will need in order to be most effective, and consider providing a “buddy” who can help them navigate the organization in the first couple of months. Give them a chance to introduce themselves at a team meeting, not just to nod at everybody but to actually spend a few minutes sharing their background, their interests, their areas of expertise, their learning goals, what they hope to do in the job – and of course, give them some warning before that meeting so they can be prepared.

Use these employees to refer other new employees. Bringing the recruiting process full circle, think about how these employees who fit your culture can help you hire more employees who fit your culture. While any employee referral program will generally be open to all employees, if there are some who you feel best internalize the values, priorities, and other characteristics of your desired organizational culture, you could always reach out to them directly and encourage them to help you find new staff. One of the best screening processes you have for new staff is your current staff; people who are immersed in the culture are best positioned to know who would fit and who would not.

Recruiting for cultural fit is a way to build, and get the value from, the organizational culture that aligns with your business goals. While skills and knowledge still matter, you need to think about how much they matter relative to other things. After all, you can always teach skills, but you cannot teach personality. Figure out what is essential in terms of skill levels, set that as your baseline requirement, and then among those who meet that minimum, look for those with the interests and working style that will allow them to actually contribute those skills effectively. Your organizational culture and your entire working environment depend upon people, so try to find the right ones.