At one point or another, we are fairly sure that you were rejected for a job because of ‘cultural fit’. Other times, it was because another candidate was a closer ‘fit’ to the job specification. Don’t worry, it wasn’t just you. Sometimes, you don’t progress beyond the recruiter or the first screening interview because of ‘fit’. It isn’t fun or light-hearted and often rocks many candidates to their core. A recent conversation with a recruiter revealed that “the most important lesson in recruitment is to hire for cultural fit”. But, what does cultural fit really mean? Is ‘fit’ a solid, tangible measurement? Do good people get excluded from jobs because of cultural fit? Read on as we ask is cultural fit excluding good candidates in the race for talent?
Cultural fit
The true meaning of cultural fit is whether an individual’s values, preferences and attitude match the company you want to join. This could cover anything from wanting to express your individuality at work to flexible hours or your views on capitalism. For example, someone who expresses themselves outwardly with a unique hairstyle, tattoos or piercings may not fit a stuffy corporate. Another person who needs to start late and finish late due to other responsibilities may seem inflexible. Finally, someone who baulks at walking the halls with people who earn 6-7 figure salaries may not fit in at an investment bank.
Unfortunately, though some of this sound like discrimination (we are coming to that), it isn’t as clear cut as the definition suggests. Many people loosely judge cultural fit on whether they like you and if the client will like you. Furthermore, cultural fit can mean a candidate that fits the same ‘profile’ as the hiring manager facilitating an easier placement.
Closer fit
Another dimension to the problem is hiring the same profile over and over because they are a ‘closer fit’. Managers with long tenure often hire near-identical resumés every time someone leaves. Therefore, hiring the same profile of candidate over and over again brings the same results, give or take. But what if there is systemic under-performance in the team or department? What if problems persist despite an injection of new blood into the organisation? In these instances, hiring outside of the hyper-specialised candidate pool that you fish in can help.
After all, why keep hiring the same people from the same industry who continually circle through your competitors? Are they really learning a great deal and bringing new points of view? The closer the fit of the candidate’s skills and experience to the role, the better their chances of completing routine tasks to standard. However, this misses the opportunity to leverage the broad view and innovative perspectives that bring new ideas.
An excuse for bias and discrimination?
Given that employers can be taken to court for discrimination during the hiring process, it seems that ‘fit’ is the get-out-of-jail free card of recruitment. People tend to gravitate towards people that are ‘like me’ (affinity bias) which breeds homogeneity in the workplace. There is also a tendency to prefer people who have similar backgrounds or education because you rate your own most highly (confirmation bias). Additionally, most candidates are judged against a pool of candidates rather than on their own merit (contrast effect) and therefore appear a poor cultural fit against the group.
From the perspective of the candidate, sometimes despite a great interview performance, they hear that they are not a good fit. This can be due to a myriad of reasons. However, the candidate might start to wonder if the real reason was due to their accent, gender, race, stutter or even their hobbies. Sure, they have a great CV and can do the job while standing on their head but ‘cultural fit’ hides the real reason they did not get selected.
Was it because they don’t play golf? Was it because they didn’t go to a grammar school? Maybe, it was because they were female and recently married. None of these matters one iota to the recruiter who just wants to get paid for placing a candidate. Put simply, anything that increases the chances of earning a fee is a good thing. After all, it is the responsibility of the organisation to have robust hiring procedures and promote DEI, right?
Square peg, round hole?
Okay, so what are we really suggesting? Do we think that cultural fit promotes cliques and ‘clubiness’? Do we think it is lazy and a cop out for not doing the hard work on culture? Does cultural fit obscure bias in recruiters and hiring managers, undermining your DEI efforts? Yes, yes and yes again. Using cultural fit as a criterion for shortlisting, selection and promotion is a sure-fire way to maintain the status quo.
Want to boost socioeconomic diversity in senior management? Sorry, didn’t fit the mould. Want to get the perspective of a wider age and gender range? Nope, there were better candidates out there. Want to add some diversity to the boardroom because it looks a little too white? Hmm, they were not a good cultural fit. We just couldn’t imagine them coming down to the pub on Friday, driving a ball down the fairway or wearing a grey suit like us.
Cultural fit flop
Sadly, it looks like cultural fit is a flop. It means that it reduces DEI efforts, hampers the development of organisation culture and promotes similar perspectives. Furthermore, ruling out candidates with general experiences may be reducing your talent pool for innovation. Some HR departments have begun to latch onto these undesirable behaviours, such as at Google who forbid rejection based on cultural fit. Additionally, R&D at companies such as 3M consider that a hyper-specialised and closer fit candidate can lack other broad, external and adjacent sector experiences. In the battle for talent, diverse perspectives and new competitive advantage, hiring solely based on fit is flopping. It is both lazy and detrimental to organisational performance. Since we also know that the brain ‘automates’ habits to conserve energy, it makes sense. What we need is the awareness, the will and the processes to prevent it.
Eradicating cultural fit as an excuse
No organisation wants to be known as ageist, sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, peniaphobic (fear of poverty) or xenophobic. The damage to the corporate brand, your personal brand and even the legal ramifications are severe if they can be proven. There appears to be no legal precedent for discrimination based on cultural fit or skills and experience we judge to be a closer fit, which means that it is up to us. So, we must eradicate this terminology and excuses to let our own biases get in the way of hiring talented people. We have previously written about back to work schemes and how they add to your neurodiversity.
Ultimately, that’s what you are missing by allowing this to continue – neurodiversity. A homogenous management team or workforce will likely miss opportunities, have less ideas and create less value. We don’t necessarily need to like each other to work well together, nor do we need people that look, sound and act like us. Yes, it takes a little more effort, but have you considered that perhaps there isn’t really a shortage of talent out there after all?
Going beyond fit, mould and like me
Here at Think Beyond, we aim to make life easier for boards. We also speak plainly and we often present clients with the hard truth. In terms of cultural fit, the truth is hard to swallow. Your preferred recruiters and even your hiring managers are more often than not using their biases to discriminate against good candidates and hire ‘safe’ choices. Most people in business have heard of the old phrase, “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM”. You could say that “Nobody gets fired for being a cultural fit”. However, if your DEI statistics are detailed enough across the organisation, you will see the impact. Perhaps it is time to revisit your hiring practices, organisational culture development and your corporate DEI programme.
If you would like to speak to one of our experts, simply call us to book an initial chat. Alternatively, why not ask us to call you back via our website.
Finally, why not read a related article that may explain why hiring managers take the easy route.