Adding to a corporate culture might be thought of as comparable to adding to a city skyline. While a harmonious balance may be desirable, a thriving municipality — like a thriving team — requires new additions.
In this regard, it’s illustrative to note that some of the most iconic buildings in our San Francisco’s skyline generated controversy when they first arrived. The Transamerica Pyramid was described by San Francisco Chronicle critic Alan Temko as “the biggest architectural dunce cap in the world” upon the building’s completion in 1972.
Even the iconic Coit Tower generated controversy when, after 1934’s West Coast waterfront strike, the building’s Public Works of Art Project funded murals were excoriated in the press as “communist propaganda.”
Keeping an eye focused on the future and broadening your company culture while remaining true to your values, like developing a city skyline, may be easier said than done. What are the principles people teams employ to structure a vibrant and diverse company culture? Built In San Francisco asked three leaders about what jobseekers can do to stand out as contributors to a healthy and evolving company culture.
An independent subsidiary of financial services firm Morningstar, PitchBook Data is a financial data and software company covering private and public financial markets. The company offers its users comprehensive data and analysis through its SaaS platform.
What one element of PitchBook Data’s company culture stands out to you as different from others in your industry or tech in general?
The people at PitchBook stand out as the main differentiator. As a company, we are currently 15 years old and 2,000 employees strong. Everyone is excited about what they do. People are collaborating, solving interesting challenges and cheering one another on to achieve success. I’ve seen more employees helping and investing in the success of their colleagues at PitchBook than I have in my 25 years of working in talent acquisition.
It’s truly incredible and a testament to PitchBook’s culture.
How do you identify the attributes and specific behaviors that tend to translate to success at PitchBook?
I’ve worked with most of our departments and hiring teams to answer this very question. We always start with our values: customers are king; excellence is a state of mind; embrace and drive change; focus on focus and make it fun.
From there, we’ve brainstormed, at a department and leadership level, on how those values translate into behaviors and actions successful employees exhibit. We created a list of eight top attributes that are consistent across the organization. In terms of interviewing, we train all our hiring teams on how to create behavior-based questions that evaluate not only our values but also the attributes that bring them to life.
By hiring people who truly resonate with our values, we are able to add to our culture in an inclusive and thoughtful way.”
How do you protect your distinct company culture while still being inclusive of new ideas and people?
I always go back to our values. We want folks who will push the envelope and bring new ideas to the table. At the same time, we want people who are truly excited and motivated by our core product. By hiring people who truly resonate with our values, we are able to add to our culture in an inclusive and thoughtful way.
Wix offers its 200 million users worldwide the opportunity to create, manage and grow their business online through the company’s comprehensive website creation platform. With a variety of tools and features like Wix Editor, Velo by Wix, Wix ADI and Wix Marketplace, users are able to create and customize all manner of websites.
What one element of Wix’s company culture stands out to you as different from others in your industry or tech in general?
Customer and employee obsession is core to everything we do at Wix. We obsess over doing right for our customers and partners, as well as doing best for our employees. It’s all connected, and we strongly believe that happy employees will make our customers happy as well.
We care a lot about the feedback we get from our users. This is what guides us. We’re constantly scanning our customer universe in order to make our products, features and processes better. We are always willing to listen to each other and become better together. This culture of customer and people obsession helps us prioritize our goals and actions the same way we would prioritize products and features.
Our incredible success is hugely influenced by our ability to focus on the needs of our users — both internal and external, present and future. We are incredibly proud of how our employees and customers contributed to Wix success and do not take our position for granted. We earn that trust every day and stay grounded to the core tenant of customer and employee obsession as an integral part of who we are.
How do you identify the attributes and specific behaviors that tend to translate to success at WIx?
We look for potential candidates who have demonstrated a history of walking the extra mile to satisfy their customers and support their peers. We often ask potential candidates to share their experiences in diverse customer scenarios, be they challenging or celebratory. And we ask how they maneuvered the scenario by keeping the customer interest paramount — even at the expense of unfavorable outcomes for the company. We believe our long-term success is built on the trust we earn by doing what is right for our customers every day. We also ask about potential candidates’ collaborations, their personal and team achievements and what has led them to successes and how they celebrate those successes.
If we have to boil it down to specific attributes, we expect our future employees to demonstrate a high degree of empathy and respect and great listening and communication skills. We also look for consistency in how potential candidates demonstrate these attributes over an extended period of time. This helps us understand the depth of their commitment to customers and to their peers since trust is earned over time and not over short bursts of high customer engagement.
We are constantly putting established beliefs to the test in the ever-evolving world of our customers.”
How do you protect your distinct company culture while still being inclusive of new ideas and people?
At Wix, we have the humility to know we don’t know it all. We also believe our strategies and approaches to customer obsession and engagement aren’t the only ones that will further our success.
We want to hire talent that comes from all backgrounds, and we are constantly learning from the incoming talent on how to improve our listening systems, incorporate user-voice and develop newer methodologies to prioritize products and features. We are also constantly creating opportunities for new and experienced talent to share ideas and best practices and put those to test in real customer situations.
We are constantly challenging ourselves and putting established beliefs to the test in the ever-evolving world of our customers. For us, customer feedback gives us an honest assessment of how ideas are received by the market and what changes we need to make to be more effective. We apply the same approach to building a better organization. No ideas or strategies are permanent. They must evolve and adapt to our evolving needs. Newer talent helps us realign our North Star without compromising on the core tenant that has made us successful in the first place.
Notion’s business software solution offers an all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, projects and team collaboration. Starting with a template or from scratch, Notion provides teams and entire companies with an easy-to-use interface wherein team members can combine text, databases, task lists, images, videos, embeds and more to build out a space to manage workflow.
What one element of Notion’s company culture stands out to you as different from others in your industry or tech in general?
Most tech companies say they’re transparent and collaborative, and that certainly applies to us too. But where we really shine is how we use our own product to create that open, collaborative and curious culture.
Almost every document that a Notion employee works on is made public and organized into topical databases – logging a history of the company’s decision-making and accomplishments. We report and triage bugs in Notion. We run all-hands and share financial updates on Notion. We do our company-wide goal setting and planning on Notion. And we celebrate each other’s wins, quirks and life stories on Notion. Our transparent and collaborative software informs our culture, and we’re better teammates and partners to each other because of it.
How do you identify the attributes and specific behaviors that tend to translate to success at Notion?
There are three main attributes and behaviors that we look for during the interview process — skills, motivations and values alignment. To get at that, we ask ourselves three questions about our candidates.
The first is: Do you have the skills to be successful and excel in the job itself? Depending on the interview, there are various skills assessments. For engineering, it’s programming; for sales, it’s whether you have a customer-centric approach to how you sell and pitch.
The second question is: Are you really motivated to work at Notion, and have you done your research? We want to hire people who believe in our mission of creating more toolmakers in society.
Our third question is: Do you embody our values? We look for people who deeply care about their craft and our mission. We are inspired by people who love to move with urgency, while balancing that with thinking rigorously from first principles.
Lastly, we look for people who are kind and direct — those who are mindful about how our interactions and presence can affect those around them.
Values should be a zip code, not an address.”
How do you protect your distinct company culture while still being inclusive of new ideas and people?
Values should be a zip code, not an address. Values should provide guidance on the mindset and attitude we want employees to have, but they should not be so prescriptive that it limits your workplace.
Our take on this is informed by one of our values: be a truth seeker. We strongly believe that good ideas can come from anyone. We stay open-minded about everyone’s opinions so we can get to the truth or best solution together. We feel comfortable challenging the status quo and welcoming new ideas to the table.
We use our values as one layer to think about candidates. Will they seek the truth? Will they drive our mission? Will they set a healthy pace to accomplish their goals? Will they be kind and direct in how they share feedback and challenge the status quo? If the candidate is aligned with our values, it is a strong indicator that they’ll be set up for success when they join. But how they do all of those things will differ based on the person, their experiences and the ideas they bring to the table.
