Corporate Teamwork

Teamwork involves a ‘Group of people working towards a common goal’. In a team the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Each member of the team works toward the common goals along with each other member. How well teams achieve their goals is subject to how well its members work in collaboration with each other.

The best method one can use in a job interview, if teamwork is important for success in a job, is to make sure to ask questions to uncover how teamwork-oriented the applicant is.

Here are examples:

1. “Find out about three gratifying projects or tasks the candidate worked in the past year?”
2. “Find out about three projects the candidate hated doing?”

After one asks each question, listen to how much the job applicant mentions teamwork. Candidates who are teamwork-oriented will describe gratifying tasks involving working with people- not teamwork-oriented will talk about gratifying tasks that involved working alone. If a job candidate does well on your pre-employment tests and job interviews, then you can do a behavioral job preview. This shows what it actually is like to work in the job. It involves the applicant spending part of a day with an employee to watch the job really being done.

This has three purposes. First, a job applicant shows interest in the job by agreeing to spend four to eight hours on the job. Second, your employee can unearth valuable insights about the candidate. Third, research shows applicants who follow through are generally (a) less likely to accept a job offer but (b) if they do accept, less likely to turnover.

Make sure the candidate sees the teamwork required to perform the job. Brief the employee to watch the applicant’s reaction to required teamwork. If teamwork is required to perform a particular job, then the manager must be a team player. This is how employees learn how to act on-the-job. If a position requires teamwork, but the manager does poorly at teamwork, then you must: A. help the manager learn teamwork skills; B. replace the manager with someone whose skill set is teamwork.

If one had a choice of working in a company where teamwork is the corporate culture or a company where teamwork doesn’t exist, where would most people want to work? Most choose the company with teamwork because working for it would be less stressful. Stress leads to burnout, which could lead one to quit a job. Companies don’t like turnover because it can raise their recruitment, training, and compensation costs.