Cultural fit has to do with how an employee fits in and works with a company’s culture and atmosphere, and less to do with overall experience. Cultural fit isn’t necessarily a bad thing: in fact, when taken into account with high experience, it can really be a good test for how someone will work with others. However, hiring exclusively for cultural fit brings negative consequences. Jacque Vilet wrote about how cultural fit isn’t always synonymous with innovation. One of the things she brought up was the eyebrow-raising 4 most commonly asked interview questions. They are:
- “What’s your favorite movie?”
- “What’s your favorite website?”
- “What’s the last book you read for fun?”
- “What makes you uncomfortable?”
Odd. Nothing about experience, career wishes, work ethic, or anything really related to the job itself. They seem awfully trivial.
The most crucial element that’s missing here is the search for innovation, often thought to be the most important factor for hiring someone. It’s easy to go with the flow or simply follow “experts” rather than really trying to innovate (or hire people that do). But it’s crucial to a business’s success. So while cultural fit is certainly an aspect of a potential employee to be observed, it shouldn’t take precedence over what an employee actually brings to the company.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
