How Your Company Can Hire the Right People

Recruiting Based on Cultural Fit

It’s a known fact that recruitment is one of the most time consuming and challenging endeavors that company founders face. As organizations grow, the types of employees they need inevitably change. Thus, company founders face the challenge of replacement or the addition of members to their workforce.

Recruiters and company founders can view a potential employee through three main lenses:

1. Skill: During an interview, the recruiter should ask the potential employee if she succeeded in a similar position in the past. From that information, the recruiter must evaluate if the potential employee is capable of performing the necessary tasks associated with the job(s) for which they applied.
2. Desire: It is crucial to gauge the desire of the potential employee in an interview. Ideally, this person seeks to create the same change in the world as the company’s founder.
3. Culture: Culture is the most challenging quality to determine in a person after a few meetings. The Harvard Business Review (2015) defines cultural fit as “the likelihood that someone will reflect and/or be able to adapt to the core beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors,” that represent the organization. If culture fit does not exist, skill and desire are irrelevant.

To illustrate this concept, imagine a high-tech Israeli company where the boss expects her employees to only see their kids on the weekends. If the company’s ideal work-life balance does not align with an employee’s, her chance of remaining with that company is low. Another area of cultural fit issues is the work environment. Generally, quiet and cubicle people are not likely to succeed in a loud and heated work environment. Finally, many companies desire to bond their employees and create greater productivity through extracurricular activities. One team member’s bad attitude about an activity may ruin the outing for everyone.

Many recruiters attempt to ignore cultural fit issues when a potential employee’s skills and desires are a perfect fit with those of the company. However, the retention rate of employees with high skill levels and low cultural fit is extremely low. For this reason, it’s crucial for company founders and recruiters to recognize that skills can be taught, but culture can’t.

Despite arguments in favor of hiring based on cultural fit, many people claim that the practice is “just a fad” or that it encourages discrimination. These arguments are valid. In fact, many organizations treat cultural fit like fad by hiring employees solely based on culture. In other words, they will not examine a person’s skill or desire during the recruiting process. In order to prevent discrimination while still noting the importance of cultural fit, company founders and recruiters must recognize skill, desire, and culture as necessary factors. Additionally, whether or not hiring for cultural fit creates discrimination depends on how the HR manager approaches culture and assessments of potential employees.

To conclude, company recruiters and founders should incorporate specific questions regarding a potential employee’s skill, desire, and culture into their interviews. A few valuable questions to ask include:

1. Why exactly do you want to work here?
2. What values are you drawn to?
3. What is your ideal work environment?
4. How would you describe our company culture based on what you have seen?

If you are interested in delving further into how your company can hire the right people, I would suggest reading this report from the University of Iowa’s Department of Management and Organizations. For a lighter read about growing your team, browse through the Society for Human Resource Management’s Retaining Talent guide.

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