There are many problems with the hiring process, a reality that has been well-documented. We see it in the bottom line results, whether it’s companies saying that they struggle to find qualified candidates, lose those candidates to other companies for one reason or another (perhaps from not acting fast enough while they are interviewing with multiple companies) or from hires that don’t work out one way or another. One can easily surmise that the experience for candidates is no picnic, either. Through all of this, one aspect in particular is worth a little further examination: the idea of hiring for cultural fit.
In fact, it’s an idea that sounds good and necessary in theory. Having a team full of extremely talented people likely doesn’t mean a thing if many on that team are unethical, difficult to deal with and can’t get along well enough to work together on tasks that require teamwork. The execution of this, however, would seem to leave a lot to be desired.
Let’s examine what is often meant by fit. Usually, this means how one will mesh with the team that is present. More often than not, the implication has to do with personality. Sports teams all have a chemistry, whether good or bad, and so do teams in an office or lab setting. But this is a tricky thing, and often misunderstood; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say something along the lines of, “I don’t think one guy didn’t pass the other guy the ball because he doesn’t care to hang out with him” when chemistry is suspected of being an issue. It usually shows up in a more subtle fashion than that, with things like effort being an issue (because players are disheartened from having to be together), trust not being there or players not knowing what teammates can do and where they are in the course of a play.
Now let’s think about if it’s possible to measure this in an interview or two, as well as whether or not this is as important as it is often made out to be. Behavioral questions are often asked to try to tease out how a person would handle a situation, which in theory gives insight into their personality. Many candidates are trained in how to answer these questions and get practice with them before they are asked in an interview, but even so, a well-answered question can elicit useful information for a manager or would-be teammate. A manager can understand how this person, if hired, operates, and where a process might go smoothly or not. It can help a manager know where someone will thrive and where they might need some development.
Where does fit come in, though? Is someone a bad fit if, say, their approach to working with a difficult co-worker isn’t quite the same as the manager’s? Is someone a bad fit if they don’t co-sign everything the manager thinks? Is someone a good fit if they regularly persuade someone of their idea for solving a problem? Is someone a good fit if they seem to be like the brother or sister the hiring manager never had, but otherwise, not so much?
When it comes to a job, fit should really be more about things like skills, experience (including industry), company size, mindset and character than any similarities to or differences from current employees from a personal standpoint. My own experience shows this. I have never been in a workplace where I felt like I didn’t fit in terms of being able to mesh with a team, but I have certainly not been a good fit at a couple of companies. In one case, the company’s size and makeup along with what that meant would be required of me led to a bad fit, in part because in hindsight I was not ready for the opportunity that the challenge brought. In another case, I didn’t get to do the kind of engineering work I really enjoyed, and while I gained new skills and liked my teammates and manager, I didn’t enjoy the work as much as I had hoped.
In each case, I was offered a job, and with a significant raise from what I had been making. Clearly, I was deemed a good fit, and I felt like it at first. Over time, that didn’t hold up in either case. Interviewing is hardly a fool-proof process, especially since many interviewers are far from pros at interviewing, but this feels like an area for some improvement. And in a time where diversity is a big part of the conversation, this idea can make candidates of color feel like this is one more way they get screened out, where they can be deemed not a cultural fit in a place full of people that don’t look like them.
Being able to fit into a company means fitting into what the company is, especially their values if they truly live by them. The company’s people reflect that, to be sure, but they do so not from being carbon copies of one another. Instead, they fit the company because the skills they possess fit with what the company produces and sells. They fit the company because they want to grow in their abilities to deliver more for the company’s customers. They fit the company because they come to understand their role and how it helps the company, whether the company has five employees or is an 80,000-employee behemoth. In the case of a startup, part of being a good fit might be that they are wired to work for a startup and all of what that entails in the same way the founders are. They fit the company because they have and/or acquire knowledge about the industry their company serves that helps them produce the best products and/or services. They fit the company because they are ethically sound in a way that a successful company demands them to be. (Getting a company in trouble with the law is probably not a good resume builder or a good reason to be promoted.)
This is not to say that personality means nothing. A company should never want to hire a slacker, or someone who is content being average or has a negative personality that drains the energy of everyone on the team. They should never want to hire someone who treats everyone else with complete disrespect. However, this doesn’t need to be complicated. At a recent event discussing how to build an engineering team, one panelist boiled what fit should mean down to something simple: just be a good person. (The language was a bit more colorful, but you get the idea.)
It sounds simple. It’s not as easy as it sounds. But it isn’t impossible, and just because the process is certainly not perfect doesn’t mean it can’t get better results.
Character matters, in that a business should want people who are upstanding citizens, who can overcome adversity and work with other people, including those different from them. Personality should matter a lot less than that. If a candidate is a study in contrasts to a couple of team members who are part of an interview team, does that mean the company should pass when that candidate also shows themselves to be a great teammate, wants to grow into a better version of him/herself and treats everyone they meet in the process – including the receptionist and even passersby if they take a walk with someone through the office along the way – with great respect?
In the end, cultural fit should be much more about character than about personality. Hire good people who are qualified for the job from a skill and experience standpoint, then watch them thrive even alongside some different people.