Stop Hiring for Culture. It’s Harming Your Business.

How many times have you been in an interview process when someone asks the question: “Will they fit in here?”

Is there an objective way to answer that question? 

No, there isn’t. 

Answering the “good fit” question is a bit like swiping left or right on a dating app. The little bit I know about this person will determine whether I take the time to have a cup of coffee with them or dismiss them. 

If your hiring process includes the necessary assessment of values alignment and skillset, then what else are you looking for? 

The question of fit is based on careful business choices. It’s based on emotion, and we all know hiring isn’t a decision we should make emotionally. 

And yet…so many business leaders do. 

The danger of a “good fit” for your culture

Some years ago, I was serving as the interim chief strategy officer for a company with about 90 employees. As part of my role, I facilitated the hiring process for some positions, including a new salesperson. 

The company already had an impressive system for looking at a candidate’s technical skills and values alignment. A candidate for the salesperson role passed the technical and values assessments. Still, the team was on the fence about the candidate. 

The interviewing team included a representative from each department of the company, and they were debating this candidate. The conversation was emotionally driven. At one point, an interviewer said “The reason I don’t want to hire them is that I don’t think they’re the kind of person I’d want to have a beer with after work. So I don’t think they’d fit into our culture.”   

What I heard: “I don’t want to hire this person because they’re not like us.” 

This interviewing team was a somewhat introverted group, and the candidate had the persona of a high-powered sales person, very outgoing. That can turn some people off or make them uncomfortable.

I coached them through the process, and they hired the candidate because he was a stellar candidate. Unfortunately, the company’s devotion to a monolithic culture didn’t go away with that one hire. 

The new salesperson outperformed their existing salesperson. Good, right? People complained that he was too loud. He was on the phone too much. Why couldn’t he do his sales through email, like the company had been used to doing? Even when the phone salesperson was outperforming the email salesperson?

They’d built an organization that didn’t appreciate diversity of thought, diversity of personality, diversity of style. The company got stuck and kept going back to old habits. We ultimately parted ways. 

See: How to Develop Your Core Values (and Implement Them) in Six Steps

Values vs. culture

I hear leaders who talk about creating culture as if it’s a thing you can mandate within your organization. Henceforth, this is what our culture will be. 

That’s not how culture works. Culture doesn’t come from the top down. It comes from the bottom up. 

A leader has the ability to influence culture by their actions. The culture that’s created is the product of who a leader hires and how they lead them. If a leader hires for values and not culture, they will end up with diversity - not only in age, race, gender, also in personality. 

If the leader hires bros who will fit in with their bro cultures or suits who will fit in with their suit culture, that’s the homogenous culture that will continue within their organization. 

Early in my career, I was hired as the eighth engineer by a startup. I was a white male, just like everyone else in the organization. I was even (coincidentally) the fifth Mike in a small company. And we aligned on core values. 

There was one thing about me that really didn’t fit with the existing culture of this Silicon Valley tech startup in the 80s, though. 

I put my family first. I came to work at 7:00 am, and I usually left  before 5:00 pm. From a lifestyle perspective, I was different. Back in the 80s, that type of divergence was a hindrance. They hired me because my skills and values were in alignment with the organization’s needs. (I successfully worked with them for four years until the board replaced the CEO, and the organization’s values changed.)

See: Is Your Company Culture Undermining Your Success?

Our “fit” beliefs are often wrong

A venture capitalist once told me that they prefer to invest in young entrepreneurs because the young are willing to take more risks. They’re not encumbered by enough experiences that makes them reconsider those risks. And they have less to lose.

On its face, the idea may sound reasonable. They value risk-taking. Young people take lots of risks, don’t they?

Maybe. Maybe not. 

I recently shared an article from Technical.ly that pointed to research showing the success rates of older entrepreneurs. Younger isn’t necessarily better in the startup world. 

I think of my own life. I’ve taken some of the biggest risks of my life in this past decade. Perhaps a younger crowd wouldn’t want to have beers with someone my age. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be value-aligned or worth investing in. 

The point here is that if risk-taking is important to a leader (or a VC), that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is deciding that people who take risks fit a certain mold and then hiring (or investing) based on that mold — that “good fit.” 

If risk tolerance is one of your values, test for that value.

See: Gen Z Isn’t Going Away, and We Shouldn’t Want Them To

Final thoughts

When I see organizations that aren’t happy with their culture, I can point to one of three things that’s happening. They haven’t clearly identified their values, they’re not hiring in alignment with those values, or their leader hasn’t actually bought into their values. 

When you hire for “fit,” you create homogenous cultures that don’t necessarily have shared values. When you hire for values, you create diverse cultures that are all on the same page about what’s important in the organization. 

You’re also more successful because diverse companies do better. We’ve seen this as we’ve increased our exposure to the neurodiverse workforce. I see it with my work on the Philadelphia-Israel Chamber of Commerce Board. Or my involvement in the Independence Business Alliance (for LBGTQ+ professionals). People with different perspectives and life experiences enhance an organization’s environment by bringing new ways of looking at things. 

If your culture is broken or you’re realizing that your hiring practices don’t adequately measure for values alignment, contact Trajectify to see how we can help.