Culture Fit: An Exclusive Criteria?
Part 1: The Latest in Personality v Technical Skill
by Ethar Alali
As I watched the new series of the Apprentice (UK) a few nights ago, and struggled to understand some of the decisions made by the candidates, I wandered back to a long standing debate about whether companies should hire technical skill over personality fit or vice versa. I’ve been watching this for various reasons since at least since 1999. Even as a developer during my university years, it became evident things were not all they seemed.
I asked a question this week after reading the bio of a recruitment agency with the following line:
“We want to make sure that you’ll be a great cultural fit as well as having all the necessary technical and business skills.”
A while ago, when still on LinkedIn, I asked LinkedIn what folk thought of this and wondered whether it was possible to empathise with people where there wasn’t a culture fit. Open question, share your thoughts.
It’s not statistically significant, given the small sample size, scientifically speaking, yet offers some words of wisdom. My gratitude goes out to those that took part.
Learning Technical Skill, Culture Fit
What is interesting is that most respondents recommended hiring for character and training them.
Piers Saye contributed “Hire the personality train the skill”. I’ll come on to some of this in a minute, but the premise is technical skill can be learned. In essence, positioning technical aptitude in a place where personality and character is not, because it can’t or it takes an inordinate amount of more time.
I’d argue that’s partially correct. However, I also ask the question, how long does it take to learn? 1 week, 1 month, one year? The reason I put that on the table is that teams and companies evaluate how good they are by their performance. If they pay £100,000 to a team when a £5,000 salary will do, given a match in quality and value delivery, the latter of which is only £80,000, that genuinely is a cost saving worth achieving. If the former team doesn’t continually improve, then you’ll never achieve it. May as well shut-up shop and go home.
However it is measured, anything impacting that performance, impacts the team. Even the measurement! Rightly or wrongly. If someone joins without the technical skill, or the conceptual skill to make the mental leap, the performance of the team will suffer. Indeed, someone new joining affects the performance in any event, as the team now have to shore up the work of the new individual by knowledge transfer, pairing or excessive support. I’ve worked with many people in my career who’ve I’ve helped do this and it has always resulted in a productivity loss to the team as well as myself to start with. The gains come later but if you’re effective, not too much later. It’s an investment in both the employees’ salaries and time and the people and products you use to achieve it.
Regardless of this, It’s not something I resent personally, since this happens for a host of reasons more generally and is a necessary investment. It doesn’t bother me until there comes a time when a manager starts looking at a chart and deciding that folk who help and shore up others, filling in the gaps, are least productive. It’s only happened once in my early career, so it’s rare thankfully and I didn’t get fired for it.
What does a “Good Culture Fit” look like?
It’s hard to define, but it is there, it is subtle and has the following diagnostic questions:
- The way individuals interact with each other is important. Especially in this more collaborative, productive, constantly changing market we find ourselves in.
- How people interact in and out of work, both in engaging with others, but crucially also demanding and respecting personal space and privacy, is a window into the company. For many people, talking to others and collaborating is exhausting! Both the organisation and the new individual have to respect the positions of both sides. People will always need space, so provide it and allow them to take it. Don’t do much more than gently.
- Equally, how people collaborate when the need to collaborate. Hence, be prepared to collaborate and if you need advanced warning, feel free to shout out about it.
- Having and being accepting of a wide range of people of different backgrounds, experiences and demographics and grok that this is not a comprehensive list.
Culture Fit, Antithesis of Diversity
Number 4 is important. Very important. In many ways and instance, culture fit has grown to become an exclusion mechanism. Coded language for finding people just like the hirers. Homogenising the culture they already have into one robust, heavy, dried up piece of clay.
Culture fit should not aim to be the antithesis of diversity. Whilst homophily is the path of least resistance, companies that do that, through negligence or malice, are impacting their end business objectives. It’s common sense, let alone backed up by multiple pieces of research on innovation.
The bigger the representation in your workforce, coupled with the organisation’s ability to translate that into actionable services or products, the bigger the market share you can appeal to with greater empathy. After all, if you are ignoring women in your products, you halve your market.
That said, if someone has the technical skill, but use it in a way incongruent with the team’s skill, that is a cultural problem. Not just on their part, but also the part of the team for letting it happen or allowing an environment for it to happen. Unless it’s a gross violation though, sometimes it is useful to test he environment in exactly this way. Don’t score anyone on it, or chastise anyone for anything. It is a collective failure, even yours, as the owner of that business. It’s a failure of people and the dynamic between them. Seed something different.
For me, that is a legitimate concern and indeed, has been a problem I’ve personally had before, but for most people, if they are able to adapt, they can change to support what to them, is a new way of working (note teams also have a responsibility to new people too, in maintaining their delivery performance). Indeed, they may even relish it. That is part of the kernel of their character that you want, but it does not take zero time to create or change.
Being a “good fit” can also be learned — Clare North
One commentator stood out as being the first person to say this. And she’s right! Clare would know. She works as facilitation coach at a number of organisations, having been a software developer in a previous life.
As much as it might be counter-intuitive, the reality is many if not most people we can learn and master these characteristics as quickly as we can learn technical skills. It is part of the culture change we wish to see and happens within those same timescales. If you find people who have suddenly gone quiet because the pressure is on, or they’ve had an unfair lambasting in the past, causing them to not contribute for fear of being wrong, this is a learned behaviour that happened in the time you’ve had them as workers. The same time technical or business aspects have been learned. It’s happening right in front of you, albeit driven by fear instead of passion. Hence, I take umbrage with the adage of “Hire the person, train the skill”. You can “Hire the learning aptitude, train all the skills”. How about you hire individuals, look in the mirror and see what you can give as much as take? Then maybe the money won’t be as much of a problem.
Enjoy this article? Spread the word by hitting the heart!
Ethar is Director of Axelisys. Want to know more about what we do? Visit our website at www.axelisys.co.uk
