No one actually knows how to hire for cultural fit

Hiring for Cultural Fit

From here:

When done carefully, selecting new workers this way can make organizations more productive and profitable. But cultural fit has morphed into a far more nebulous and potentially dangerous concept. It has shifted from systematic analysis of who will thrive in a given workplace to snap judgments by managers about who they’d rather hang out with. In the process, fit has become a catchall used to justify hiring people who are similar to decision makers and rejecting people who are not.

Phrased another way:

  1. We like hanging out with those similar to us. So, uh, we hire them.
  2. When we get “headcount,” there’s often little strategy behind our next step. We just rush in to fill it!
  3. People want to think hiring is “a science.” It’s not.

 

Ted Bauer