Communications of the ACM
Job Applicants' Cultural Fit Can Trump Qualifications
Credit: Britt Wilson / Bloomberg Businessweek
The key to building a creative, modern workforce and hiring the right candidates is asking personal questions about favorites, likes, and hobbies — not questions about technical skills. In order to evaluate the cultural fit of a candidate, companies are increasingly making hiring decisions in a manner more closely resembling the choice of friends or romantic partners. As a result, job interviews are becoming more like first dates, as hiring managers feel free to ask about things such as favorite movies, favorite Web sites, or favorite books. Yet, as "cultural fit" becomes a popular buzzword with hiring managers, are employers still hiring the most skilled candidates?
Many job seekers now cite company culture as their second-highest priority, trailing only salary considerations. In an employment market in which many first-time employees relocate for work, offices are becoming surrogate families and social communities. New hires, especially young workers, want like-minded colleagues who share their values. These trends are being driven by younger workers because they care about culture: they'd rather have meaningful work over more pay, or work for a company that gives back or cares about the environment. They want a culture that's less hierarchical, more flexible, and more understanding of differences.
So how do companies value diversity and cultural fit, especially if hiring managers are often biased toward hiring people much like themselves? Often, this idea of tightly knit cultural affinity seems to run counter to the U.S.'s melting-pot ethos. As a result, hiring is the moment when American ideals about team diversity collide with the reality of building a cohesive, practical staff. For the manager, it's also when abstract notions about corporate culture collide with instinct and bias. Most companies have elaborate systems of checks and balances and executive-level diversity officers who work hard to ensure inclusiveness of race, gender, and sexuality.
From Bloomberg Businessweek
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