Stop hiring for culture fit

Stop hiring for culture fit.

This might as well be the title for the Interview Training that we do here at DNSFilter. It could also be my professional mantra. After recruiting for high-growth tech startups for the past 12+ years, I’ve seen companies fall into this trap time and time again.

How often have you heard the term “A Player”?

Or heard people talk about hiring for “culture fit”?

And don’t even get me started when an interviewer says “I knew within the first five minutes that the candidate wasn’t a good fit so I ended the interview early.” [Insert Laura going on mute and waving her hands wildly in the air fuming with rage].

These phrases oftentimes are a way to perpetuate homogenous work environments where everyone comes from the same background with the same experience and the same approach to solving challenging problems. And we wonder why we have a diversity and inclusion problem across the tech industry.

It is human nature to feel positively toward someone that reminds us of ourselves. But when we are tasked with creating high performing teams that can build products we’ve never dreamt about to solve problems that we’ve never encountered, homogenous teams will undoubtedly hinder progress. An affinity for your teammates only really comes in handy when you need to commiserate over coffee or drinks because your high-performing, diverse competition outpaced your team of identical replicas.

That homogenous team does not serve us well in a high-growth startup environment where new issues pop up every day and the need for agility outweighs a “by the books” problem solving methodology.

DNSFilter has been successful hiring over the past 12 months, despite a hyper competitive recruiting environment. A big part of that success is having a phenomenal company to recruit for; Not only is DNSFilter 100% remote, we’re also sitting at the forefront of innovation in an exciting industry. I learned recently that another part of our success is that many of the hiring principles we follow here at DNSFilter are similar to what Netflix followed to catapult its employee base to astronomical heights.

Key similarities include:

Probing beneath the surface

If you’re working on exciting projects with cutting edge technology, skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and a sense of ownership are more important than experience listed on a resume. Our Director of Business Operations, Aliese Alter, came from a law enforcement background and our MSP Evangelist, Mikey Pruitt, used to be an electrician. Prioritizing skills over education or specific company experience has served us very well in creating diverse teams with different perspectives and radically different life experiences.

Establishing a partnership between Hiring Managers and Talent Acquisition Teams

An internal recruiting team is an invaluable resource for any company in the high-growth phase. Hiring Managers and Talent Acquisition teams are partners in the hiring process and absolutely must work together to fill open roles.

At DNSFilter, recruiters are treated as true business partners. The best recruiters understand the needs of the business and understand the nuances of the teams that they are recruiting for. When Hiring Managers treat the Talent Acquisition team as partners, the results speak for themselves. We are currently sitting at an average time to fill of 30.18 days across all departments and we have an even shorter time to fill (25.91 days) for Engineering roles. At DNSFilter, everyone in the hiring process moves together as a united team to fill open roles.

Treating the candidate as your customer

The interview is a candidate’s first impression of the company mission and values. Let’s treat candidates as we would our customers and ensure they have an incredible interview experience, regardless of whether or not they are hired for that particular role at that particular time.

We move expeditiously through the interview process here. We have a “Three Interview Rule” where we aim not to do more than three interviews after a recruiter speaks to a candidate. Due to the alignment of our hiring principles, we feel confident that we can make a good decision after three interviews. We also believe that the candidate has all of the information they need to make a decision after three thoughtful and informative interviews.

We prioritize the candidate experience every step of the way, which is a big reason why we are currently sitting at a 93% offer acceptance rate (although I’m sure the rotating 4 day work week, competitive compensation, fully remote office, and great leaders have something to do with that metric too).

So what was the point of this long ramble? Am I saying that DNSFilter does everything perfect when it comes to hiring and recruiting? Am I saying that we are as good as the behemoths in the tech space at attracting top talent? Absolutely not! But we are moving in the right direction because we are not just hiring for culture fit.