How to Hire for Cultural Fit [Expert Insights]

Lindsay Purchase interviewed Ben Baldwin on behalf of Workplace Tribes in early January. 

Finding the right person to fill a particular role can be a job in and of itself. From determining what you’re looking for, to conducting interviews, to negotiating compensation, hiring is a complex and time-consuming process. 

ClearFit has introduced a successful online software that aims to simplify and improve the predictability of hiring, while also cutting costs and saving time. Users can create a job posting, and applicants are evaluated based on their background and cultural fit. 

"People think that selling or interviewing is about talking. It’s not. It’s about listening."

Cultural fit, which includes such things as personality and motivation, must be looked at in accordance with knowledge and experience, says ClearFit co-founder Ben Baldwin. But “if you were to pick one that’s the most important to know, it would be the cultural one, because you can’t really change how someone fits.”

“The hiring process is broken,” says Baldwin, something which he attributes in part to human behaviour and our instinct towards choosing like-minded people. An employee with strong cultural fit is not necessarily the person who you best understand or relate to.

“If you can find people who are quite different from you, even if they’re on the same path as you, then it’s great because you complement each other rather than overlap,” Baldwin says. Diversity lends itself to greater innovation and division of labour. 

The process of selecting a candidate with appropriate cultural fit can be a “make or break situation” particularly within small businesses, the importance of which increases with the seniority of the position. 

The impact of poor management can have serious implications for team morale and retention.

“If vital administrators and technical staff don’t fit, what happens is something I call a malignancy, where they can have a really far-reaching negative impact on the organization,” Baldwin believes. This can lead people to question their own fit and job performance, rather than the authority figure. 

A major component of hiring is the interview stage, a key area where Baldwin says critical mistakes can be made. He explains, “People think that selling or interviewing is about talking. It’s not. It’s about listening.” The role of the interviewer “should be asking great questions,” specifically behaviour-oriented questions which are revealing of potential cultural fit.

"Figure out what you need. And also figure out what you don’t need."

Furthermore, Baldwin notes that for applicants who are rejected, interviewing can be an unnecessarily negative experience.

“People treat the hiring process like a screening, when actually, if you’re doing it properly, it should be a sales process,” he says. Even if the candidate is not an appropriate fit for the position, a positive encounter increases the probability of referrals 

Another common mistake, acknowledges Baldwin, is having “an unrealistic view of what they need in a hire.” You may be having difficulty filling a position because the person that you’re looking for has qualities that don’t match your actual requirements. It’s important to both “Figure out what you need, and also figure out what you don’t need.” 

Baldwin concludes optimistically, noting that the hiring process “can be fixed pretty easily, and it’s not difficult to become really good at this stuff. The overarching thing here is that you need to know cultural fit, and that you need to know it early.” 

 

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