To think employers shouldn’t hire on cultural fit

[Matleave22]

In my opinion, hiring on cultural fit is a really fast way to only hire ‘people like you’.

Surely a range of people with diverse outlooks and differing world views will make for a better and more powerful team! I think this ‘hiring on culture’ ideology inhibits diversity and inclusion.

What do you think? AIBU?

You need a masters [...]

Yes I get all this but you are describing what the current incumbents look like and the path they took and making that the profile. For example statistically men are more likely to get sponsorship and funding and publishing in scientific and technical research and yet both success in these is considered an "objective" measure for many research and teaching posts.

How do you separate out objective criteria from "profile of current incumbents"? I'm not pretending its easy - I've had to work on this in my own field but it does bring home to me how many ostensible "objective" criteria are very far from it.

@Cactu

I’ve heard of it in the tech sector.

It basically means hiring a person who can communicate and not necessarily the most technically able person.

That’s not what it means! The most technically able person isn’t always the best for the job. The vast majority of challenge in tech work is team communication (someone else wrote something, it breaks my code. Someone didn’t follow the design plan, etc). Nobody wants to hire the superstar developer who sits down, bangs out code but can’t explain what they’re doing. Or justifying their technical decisions to a wider audience.

In fact… it requires more communication skill than the average job. Because if you’re not careful you’ll confuse people, and everybody will go off doing their own thing, and you get a hot mess that breaks every 5 seconds.

Also to add I don’t deny theres hiring of people ‘just like someone’ but it’s not the communication vs technical ability.
Most ‘tech bros’ are the entrepreneurs/ faffy positions. Not the actual devs … their own bias is hiring socially awkward white men 😂😎

@HarrietsChariot

I was taught that there are three tests to meet when interviewing for a role (on either side):

1. Can they do the job?
2. Will they do the job?
3. Are they a nutter?

The first is to do with showing they are capable, the second is to show they have the right mindset and drive, and the third is to show that they won't cause massive problems with existing staff.

To use a simile that I was given, the recruitment process is like casting a big fishing net out behind a traweler. You'll pick up lots of fish but a lot of them won't be the type you're looking for so you'll have to throw them back. Occasionally you might pick up a barrel of toxic waste or a landmine, and you'd better make sure you don't try to haul that aboard.

The flaw in this process is that, after throwing back the unsuitable fish and avoiding the toxic waste, there will still be a number of suitable fish in the net.

All these fish might pass your three test questions.

Unconscious (or conscious) bias justified by 'cultural fit' comes into play when selecting which of the suitable fish to choose.

Yes I get all this but you are describing what the current incumbents look like and the path they took and making that the profile

The 'current incumbents' may be doing a tremendous job and you may want to perpetuate that? What's the problem?

'If it ain't broke don't fix it' sometimes applies too

The issue seems to be the fast tracking in of people to expand the "cultural outlook" which involves putting people in roles they are not good at for the sake of a box ticking exercise

This can become a nightmare sometimes, yes

YANBU. People should be hired solely on the basis of the ability to do the job, absolutely nothing else.

@C8H10N4O2

You need a masters [...]

Yes I get all this but you are describing what the current incumbents look like and the path they took and making that the profile. For example statistically men are more likely to get sponsorship and funding and publishing in scientific and technical research and yet both success in these is considered an "objective" measure for many research and teaching posts.

How do you separate out objective criteria from "profile of current incumbents"? I'm not pretending its easy - I've had to work on this in my own field but it does bring home to me how many ostensible "objective" criteria are very far from it.

While it’s true that men are more likely to get the above - it’s a key component of the job. You can’t get around it (unlike ‘socialising after work’ etc.) Hiring someone who doesn’t meet the above would be passing over qualified applicants for the sake of diversity.

The long term solution is of course initiatives for more women to access sponsorship/ funding and a cultural change (academic life is often incompatible with family life in the early years). But in the short term a single employer can’t really change much.

It’s a bit like how employers want more women in very technical jobs - but the % of women in computer science courses is very low. The solution isn’t to hire unqualified women . Maybe a ‘less qualified’ woman who can be trained up but not at the expense of someone who’s both technically and socially able

Tricky, this is so tricky.
It’s a fine line and this has to be offset with industry needs and the huge pressure to fill posts when staffing is desperately unsafe to function.

Unfortunately the pressure to fill the posts means that qualifications is the criteria rather than suitability and cultural fit.
IME we are now having to put right the huge issues created by the unsuitable staff taken
on.

The mistakes, errors and huge difference in what they learned in their training and how they work in their culture is proving a massive issue.

And these staff outnumber hugely so it’s impossible to keep a lid on and to manage.
It’s like shovelling snow in a snowstorm. Impossible.

Assuming cultural fits means company culture. I think it's a yes and no. It's important that you hire a person that works well with the team and fits to the company culture. The trouble is that a lot of hiring managers are not very good at hiring which can lead to company culture to mean personal preference. Also you can't really know how someone fits to the team from a few interviews. Also the company culture can be toxic and new people might actually improve it. My new manager wants to change the culture and is hiring based on what she thinks the culture should be which cause a lot of tension.

In conclusion, it is important to hire based on cultural fit but it is too often used too narrowly and as a lame excuse to hire who you want based on personal preference which is filled with bias.

@seaandsandcastles

YANBU. People should be hired solely on the basis of the ability to do the job, absolutely nothing else.

Of course - but their ability to do the job can be very dependent on their cultural fit - if they don’t hold the values of the company - they can cause bigger problems than their hiring was supposed to solve.

@seaandsandcastles

YANBU. People should be hired solely on the basis of the ability to do the job, absolutely nothing else.

Disagree. In my last job we hired someone very technically able to do the job, but it turned out she talked over everyone, asked for help then argued why the advice was incorrect, and was routinely so condescending to the woman she sat next to that she made her cry.

I think it can be a loose term that invites accidental or overt prejudice. For that reason application outcomes should be carefully monitored for any patterns.

But also having been on the other side it’s amazing how one person can destroy a positive team dynamic you’ve spent years building. Someone whose overly pushy and competitive can reduce creativity as no one wants to share for example.
I think personality matters, and “not being a good fit” can be code for “you seemed overly confident for your level of experience and we’re worried you’ll mansplain to our female managers”

@C8H10N4O2

You need a masters [...]

Yes I get all this but you are describing what the current incumbents look like and the path they took and making that the profile. For example statistically men are more likely to get sponsorship and funding and publishing in scientific and technical research and yet both success in these is considered an "objective" measure for many research and teaching posts.

How do you separate out objective criteria from "profile of current incumbents"? I'm not pretending its easy - I've had to work on this in my own field but it does bring home to me how many ostensible "objective" criteria are very far from it.

Statistically men are more likely to get sponsorship and funding, but statistically, at least in my sector, men and women get funding at roughly the same rate as they apply for it (eg. around 3% of all applications get accepted) and that holds true whether it is a woman applying or a man applying. Women are not discriminated against when it comes to funding allocation, there are just a lot fewer of them applying so the overall percentage will be lower.

Interestingly when it comes to publishing I now notice that almost everyone I know publishes under their initial rather than their first name, whether they are male or female. My research ends usually has my name as M. rather than Matilda for example, but this is common with the men as well (apart from them not being called Matilda).

My sector is a 60/40 split in favour of men, at the absolute top of that it is closer to 80-85% men, largely because the people with 4-5 decades experience are men for historical reasons and some women tend to not take project lead roles because that can be somewhat difficult with children, although that has improved significantly in the last decade. Another factor is the split studying the relevant subjects at degree level is roughly a 70/30 split in favour of men, as a general rule women are less interested in sciences than men are, I see this when we take part in outreach programs to schools, more boys want to study science and maths than girls do.

Most people who end up on project leads for research get there through demonstrating that they can do and understand all the roles involved in that process (there will always be the occasional one who gets a project lead because some family member funds the research). The thing I love about my field is how many people approach it in different ways, they think of different ideas, look to different solutions, but the process of research is the same, verifiable, repeatable, following scientific method, properly recorded and documented, because if it is not then it is not research, it is just messing around in a lab. The "profile of the current incumbents" is irrelevant, they want good researchers, they recognise the value of people thinking differently, they also recognise that sloppy research is worthless.

I've attended a lot of interviews over the years. The only time "cultural fit" has been used in a discussion is when it's clear that the organisation expect you to work 3+ hours overtime a day without complaint.

In my public sector org, skills and criteria scoring are very strictly controlled, and 'fit' seems to be more about:

• Whether you can see yourself working alongside this person, or is their personality so abrasive/difficult that it would make life hell for everyone else, whatever the other strengths the recruit would bring to the role.

You could score highly on skills answers, but if every answer also criticises everyone around them, or moans, or other poor attitude, that would trigger concerns on 'fit'. Similarly if the applicant scores highly on most skills and experience but is dismissive of the women on the interview panel and cosies up to the men.

• And to some extent, are they in the job for the right reasons (it's a public sector org where most people are in it not to make money (ha ha) but to give something back/make a positive difference, etc, and do they align with the organisation's key values.

You have to be really careful to avoid conflating 'fit' (personality) with 'fit' (we have the same hobbies and interests): The latter risks only appointing people in your own image, leading to reduced diversity of the team which not only is ethically concerning, but will also result in a poorer performing team.

Hobbies can be tricky, and we don't ask about them to avoid this bias as many hobbies (sailing, skiing etc) are socially/economically exclusive, or certain sports could be difficult for some people with disabilities. OTOH I like to see some sign of interests/hobbies and enthusiasm, as that dedication and enthusiasm often spills over into life attitude. I don't care if it's baking/reading comic books/mountaineering/polo, as long as there's a spark of something.

Our recruitment process goes:

1. Are they qualified? (CV stage, bin any that aren't or aren't at least close if they have other interesting stuff on there)

1. Who has the most experience? (Again, not always most experienced = gets the job, but if we had 5 applicants with 3+ years experience and 2 with none, the 2 would have to have outstanding other skills that would add value to get an interview)

1. After we've narrowed it down from that, it absolutely is on 'cultural fit'.

I don't mean 'is the same race/gender/age/political persuasion/sexual orientation as the rest of the team'.

I mean, at interview, do we like them? Do they like us? Can I see their working style fitting into the office - and if no, is that because they do things 'better' or differently, and is that something we could consider a benefit to the team?
An example of that is a senior developer we hired who was used to an agile working framework, which was at odds with how we worked, and we had concerns that he'd struggle with our less structured style - but we saw the potential that introducing some of those methods to the entire team could bring, so we hired him and he's made some amazing changes to the way we work.

I think the word 'cultural' throws people: at my business, we aren't using 'culture' to mean your social cultural status, but the culture of the company itself. As in values, ways of working etc. We've had people join us from massive corporates who were used to throwing people under the bus at the first sign of a problem and very separate teams (so they refused to work even a millimetre out of scope), couldn't cope without 100 meetings a day. I'm sure in their eyes they'd see us as disorganised or having nebulous roles or requiring too much self-direction, but it's what works for us and ultimately working styles need to match up or it's not going to go well!

Hobbies can be tricky, and we don't ask about them to avoid this bias as many hobbies (sailing, skiing etc) are socially/economically exclusive, or certain sports could be difficult for some people with disabilities. I think I would redact hobbies if we went out to posting a job publicly again for this reason.
We never think cultural fit means enjoys the same hobbies - it means the way in which you like to work, not being an arse with a huge ego - that's probably No 1 (Alphas need not apply!) and someone who isn't willing to do a sec more than they are contracted for, or help someone who's struggling, or likes to keep all the information to themselves, doesn't learn and can't take feedback, someone who can't cope with change - in our industry - change and uncertainty is an unavoidable part of the job, who is chaotic is their approach to working. I mention all the negatives here because someone who has these qualities is poison to our team and it doesn't matter how clever or talented they are technically - if they reveal themselves to be like this, they will not be happy or succeed in our business.