What Is Culture Fit?

When you’re building a team, it’s important to make sure that everyone is aligned with your company culture. Culture fit is the degree to which a candidate’s values and beliefs are aligned with the company’s values and beliefs. It is not about their personality or background, but rather their core values.

Assessing culture fit during the interview process is all about ensuring that new hires will align with your mission and values, and thrive in your company.

The Importance of Culture Fit

When you’re looking to hire new employees, it’s important to consider the company’s culture. A candidate who doesn’t have the same values as your business may not be a good fit for your company. Hiring for culture fit helps employees feel welcomed, supported, and understood.

When people are hired into a company that’s a good match for their personality and style of working, they’re more likely to be happy in the job and stay with you longer than you might expect. In fact, studies show that hiring for culture can reduce turnover by as much as 20%. Higher retention and engagement rates lead to higher productivity, better customer service, and lower turnover rates in general — which ultimately translates to higher revenue.

Hiring people who don’t fit your company’s values isn’t just wasteful — it can be downright damaging to morale.

Throughout the recruitment process, your company should emphasize your values. This makes it easy for potential employees to see if they align with your culture.

Culture Add

Companies should want to hire people who are additive to the culture, bringing their own perspectives, quirks, and qualities to your organization. That’s precisely what culture add is一a hire whose differences from your current employee base are an asset to the organization.

People who are considered a culture add aren’t afraid to voice their opinions in an effective, productive way. They are also skilled at adapting to various cultures without causing friction or watering down their unique approach. And this is valuable; diversity of thought and expression can make your employees develop more creative ideas and solutions to problems.

However, finding and hiring culture adds isn’t a walk in the park. Companies have to know what type of person they are looking for (i.e., what characteristics their teams might be missing), where that type of potential hire might hang out, and train interviewers not to think in terms of “cultural fit”. Having a more structured interview process decreases the risk of weeding out culture add candidates before they can show off their superpowers.

How to Hire For Culture

Work on your employer branding

Your tech stack, product vision, velocity, work culture, compensation, and perks all impact your culture. Make sure all of these not only reflect your core values but publicize them to the world The more people know how great your company is, the more inbound candidates you’ll get.

Amazing branding separates your company from the rest of the pack and increases the level of talent you can attract. Make sure you answer questions and comments on Glassdoor, have positive reviews of your interview process, and market your employees on your website.

Interviews produce a lot of data. So why not collect and use it to teach your interviewers how to screen for culture fit? Here’s how:

Make a List of Your Company’s Red Flags

A list of red flags should already be a part of your hiring SOP.

Everyone on your team, from recruiters to hiring managers to interviewers, should know – and be able to easily access – a full list of company red flags. Whenever an interviewer hears or sees these things, they should probe the candidate for more information or pass on the candidate altogether.

Some examples of red flags could be:

• Exaggerated answers
• Lack of explanation for why they switched jobs
• Subpar reference interviews
• Taking credit for others’ work
• Speaks poorly of past coworkers or bosses
• Tardiness
• Upfront demands

Take input from employees and leadership when developing this list, and be sure to update it as your culture and business evolve.

Score candidates in real-time

Prompt interviewers to rate candidates’ responses during an interview or immediately afterward within an interview platform like Chatkick or in an ATS. Scoring culture fit right away makes interviewers’ ratings more accurate and quickens the feedback cycle; people with a particular score advance, and others should be removed from the process.

Use Culture Fit in Your Hiring Process

If you’re looking to hire a new team member, it’s important to make sure that they’ll fit in with your existing culture. You don’t want someone who will clash with their coworkers or disrupt the flow of your office environment. By hiring for culture fit, you’ll be able to find someone who shares similar values, making them more likely to succeed as an employee.