Values & Culture Evaluation

Template Overview

Great engineering cultures are maintained by hiring individuals whose core work values align with your organization’s operating doctrine. This template structures behavioral inquiry around company principles: local-first privacy, extreme craftsmanship, intellectual honesty, and high autonomy.

Markdown Template Structure

Copy the block below or click Download .md File to add this template directly to your personal vault:

---
title: "Values Alignment: [Candidate Name]"
date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
interviewer: "[[Head of People / Lead Advocate]]"
candidate_name: "[Candidate Name]"
target_role: "Senior Product Designer"
alignment_score: "Strong Alignment / Alignment / Misaligned"
tags: [culture, values, behavioral-interview, hiring, people]
---

# Values & Culture Alignment — [Candidate Name]

## 1. Operating Doctrine & Ground Rules
- **Assessment Philosophy:** Evaluating alignment with core operational principles: User Privacy Sovereignty, Autonomous Execution, and Intellectual Candor.
- **Objective:** Disqualify arrogance, micromanagement inclinations, or indifference to user privacy.

## 2. Core Operating Principles Inquiries
### Principle 1: Uncompromising Respect for User Privacy
- **Question:** "Have you ever designed a feature where business analytics clashed with user privacy? How did you navigate the trade-off?"
- **Candidate Evidence:** Described advocating against third-party session replay tools on an e-commerce platform because they recorded keystrokes from confidential form fields.
- **Alignment:** **Strong**. Deeply understands the ethical importance of data minimization.

### Principle 2: High Autonomy & Low Bureaucracy
- **Question:** "Describe a scenario where you lacked clear requirements from leadership. How did you proceed?"
- **Candidate Evidence:** Conducted independent user interviews, authored a clean Markdown PRD, built an interactive prototype, and presented validated solutions rather than waiting for instructions.
- **Alignment:** **Strong**. Natural self-starter.

### Principle 3: Intellectual Honesty & Humility
- **Question:** "Tell me about a strongly held design opinion that you changed based on empirical evidence."
- **Candidate Evidence:** Initially advocated for rich animated page transitions; dropped them after user testing proved they degraded task efficiency and introduced motion sensitivity issues.
- **Alignment:** **Strong**. Data-driven and humble.

## 3. Cultural Health & Red Flag Screen
- **Did the candidate demonstrate blame-shifting?** No. Took full accountability for past project failures.
- **Did the candidate show genuine curiosity?** Yes. Asked insightful questions about our zero-telemetry architecture.

## 4. Final Recommendation
> [!IMPORTANT] Recommendation: ADVANCE TO OFFER
> Candidate exemplifies our cultural values of autonomous craftsmanship and principled privacy advocacy.

- [ ] Submit evaluation note to hiring committee repository.

Filled Real-World Example

Here is a realistic example demonstrating how this template captures actual deliberations:

---
title: "Values Alignment: Sofia Chen"
date: 2026-10-06
interviewer: "[[Claire Evans]]"
candidate_name: "Sofia Chen"
tags: [culture, values, hiring]
---

# Values Alignment: Sofia Chen

## 1. Summary
Claire Evans interviewed Sofia Chen for the Product Design lead role. Sofia's answers demonstrated an organic commitment to local-first software and accessible design standards, making her an exemplary cultural match.

When to Use and When to Avoid

When to Use

• Use during dedicated cultural and behavioral evaluation interview rounds.
• Use to assess alignment with published organizational operating principles.
• Use to identify communication friction or ethical red flags before extending offers.

When to Avoid

• Avoid using as a tool to discriminate based on personal background or personality style.
• Avoid using for technical code execution reviews.

On-Device AI Integration

Summarize your recording in Oyma with this local instruction:

Analyze the values and culture alignment interview recording:
1. Summarize the candidate's responses regarding data privacy ethics and user sovereignty.
2. Outline behavioral evidence of autonomy, intellectual honesty, and constructive collaboration.
3. Record the final alignment rating, candidate questions, and committee recommendations into Markdown.

Your data remains securely on your Mac with zero cloud exposure.