Stop Hiring For Culture Fit

While debating the merits of a potential new hire, we’ve all heard this before…”Is this someone you can grab a beer with?” It’s human nature to seek out what’s most comfortable but when it comes to hiring, that mentality is doing your company a disservice.

We are witnessing a shift away from the traditional objective of hiring for “culture fit” and instead moving more towards hiring for “culture add”. For those of us that have played an active role in hiring throughout our careers, maintaining the status quo is easy, but hiring shouldn’t be easy if you want it to be successful. This shift won’t happen overnight, but companies need to push themselves in this new direction, one “culture add” hire at a time.

So what are the major drawbacks of putting too much emphasis on fit? 

Well, for starters, hiring only for fit perpetuates biases and can lead to discrimination in the hiring process (whether it be intentional or unintentional). But beyond that, companies who wish to operate creatively, boost innovation and be more productive can only do so when their employees are able to approach challenges from all angles and thought processes. That requires diverse teams; not “diverse” in terms of simply checking the box on gender or race, but going further to find those hires that you know address the areas in which your company lacks. Hiring for culture add is more about how a potential candidate sees the world, not how the world sees them.

But before you can hire for culture add, you must first put in the time to truly understand your business.

Start by taking inventory of the current team and identifying the most obvious gaps. What skill sets or viewpoints are missing? Do you have a good mix of both “inside the box” and “outside the box” thinkers? Do you have conservatives and risk takers? People who obsess over every last detail and others who are comfortable “moving fast and breaking things”?

How would you describe your company culture? What does your brand represent? What determines a successful hire, and based on that, who is most likely to succeed or fail in your work environment?

Taking the time to answer these questions (thoroughly and honestly!) is critical to ensuring success along with keeping these tips in mind...

• Don’t rely too heavily on employee referrals for new hires While it can be a cost & time savings in the short term, it’s far more likely that those employees will refer people with their same backgrounds, which is counterproductive to hiring for culture add in the long term.
  
  
• Embrace “Weird” Oftentimes in interviews we shrug off candidates that think differently, but those are exactly the kinds of people your team can benefit from. That comes with an important caveat though...if you hire “weird” you must make sure those people are allowed to stay weird. That means fighting the urge to force them into a box or shut down their unique ideas because “we’ve always done it this way”.

• • Be Patient Hiring more diverse teams can frequently lead to short term headaches - Maybe the teams don’t gel right away. But have no fear, though your diverse teams may not feel as effective initially, countless studies have shown that they are more effective in the long run.

• • Cast a Wider Net Consider hiring outside your field. Much like companies, fields of interest can also self-select for a certain type of person. So long as a candidate meets the basic job requirements and has demonstrated the ability to be successful in past jobs, don’t put so much weight on what profession they are coming from.

There you have it! Now is as good a time as any to make the case with your TA teams about the value of hiring for culture add. It might make for some uncomfortable realizations and challenging situations, particularly retraining yourselves to see the potential in candidates you would typically overlook.

Thankfully, the emergence of video-focused hiring tools, like our platform here at JobPixel, are making it possible to go beyond the resume and hear from candidates in their own words why they would be the perfect hire. 

Ready to see what video can do for you?