Hiring for "Fit" is a Crutch
Improve your process and posture.
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Main Feature: Hiring for “Fit” is a Crutch
Jobs and Talent
Personal and Professional Updates
Culture-Fit Paralysis
“We have been interviewing candidates but can’t decide. Everyone who makes it to the interview stage is qualified on-paper but I keep hearing that the candidates ‘just don’t seem like a good fit’.”
This was how a client described the difficulty in filling an open position. There always seems to be someone that gives a thumbs down to a candidate because they’re not the right fit. I call it “Culture-Fit Paralysis.” It’s a common refrain in small organizations where company culture is particularly potent and on teams that believe their tight-knit functioning is essential for results. And it’s a trap.
Ensuring that new hires mesh well with their new environment matters. However, we often go about this incorrectly. A slight change in our hiring mindset (and resulting practices) can mitigate this common speed bump.
Why does this happen? How is it that everyone qualified on paper fails to meet some amorphous “fit” criteria? Well, if it’s not already completely obvious, it is likely there is something going on here that has nothing to do with the candidates.
When I continuously hear about how a candidate “isn’t a great fit” my mind drifts to what may be influencing this convenient trope. To diagnose the root causes behind a given case of Culture-Fit Paralysis, I first try to analyze the issue using David Rock’s (2008) S.C.A.R.F. model of threat and reward as guiding framework. The model suggests that symbolic threats and needs for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness tend to govern a lot of our behavior at work (and elsewhere). Here’s a look at how each dimension might be leading your colleagues to dismiss a candidate and blame it on fit:
Status: Perhaps the candidate is a threat to the relative status of someone on your team. This threat might be pragmatic – perhaps their arrival jeopardizes a team member’s formal authority or their status as subject matter expert. Or it could be more psychological – perhaps a candidate threatens to usurp someone’s role as the creative one on the team, or the funny person, or even (gulp) the most physically attractive. Status threat is always the first dimension I analyze.
Certainty: Maybe this particular candidate – or any person filling this role – will alter how your team members operate and therefore threaten their innate sense of certainty about how to thrive. In a world filled with uncertainty, introducing more ambiguity doesn’t sit well with our primitive brains and might cause resistance-behaviors.
Autonomy: Autonomy threats tend to be most salient when you’re hiring for a new position and there’s a chance that the introduction of this role will change your team members’ perspective on their autonomy.
Relatedness: A new team member inherently impacts the group dynamic. If the dynamic is seen as one worth preserving, hiring anyone new threatens what has been working. Thus, relatedness threats are most likely to be relevant for high-performing teams with a strong degree of cohesiveness. “Why ruin a good thing?” - Our Unconscious.
Fairness: Perhaps team members feel as though the hiring process isn’t fair. Maybe they feel they had to jump through far more hoops than this candidate back when they were hired. Maybe they feel as though they should have more say in the hiring process.
We’re rarely aware of or honest with ourselves when it comes to these threats. The result is that candidates may get labeled as a ‘poor fit’.
So what can you do?
First, consider changing your process. You may have too many cooks in the kitchen so consider not having as many team members conduct interviews. If you think everyone needs to have some input, another option is to switch entirely to a panel/group interview. When everyone participates in the same interview experience it’s harder for just one outlier team member to label a candidate as a “bad fit”.
Second, consider changing your posture. Considering sharing these common S.C.A.R.F. threats with your team as a means of inoculating them to their prevalence.
More importantly, instruct your team to focus predominantly on how they could effectively integrate each candidate instead of whether or not that candidate would fit well with the team. During interviews, your team should be thinking about how they would adjust to make this new hire most successful. This isn’t simply about putting a positive spin on the question at hand. Rather, it’s about recognizing that it’s also your team’s responsibility to optimize this person’s job performance.
To be clear: I don’t mean to suggest that fit doesn’t matter. It does! What I am offering is that if a lack of ‘fit’ is a consistent reason your team can’t decide on a candidate, it probably means that it’s more about your team than the candidate. Reorienting your team’s posture when evaluating candidates from ‘do they fit?’ toward ‘what would we need to do in order to ensure they fit well?’ should help.
Make hiring more about your team’s ability to be flexible and incorporate someone new rather than finding a person who fits in seamlessly.
Jobs and Talent
Are you – or is someone you know – on the job hunt? Got a job you need to fill? Let me know. Maybe I can showcase them here!
What I’ve Been Reading:
This section has moved to a separate monthly posting on LinkedIn. It would make me very happy if you would subscribe to the LinkedIn version right here.
Personal & Professional Updates
My Endeavorun group just held another Boulder running retreat. We had nearly 40 folks there in total and it was just terrific. We have some pretty exciting things planned for 2023.
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Be compassionate and intentional.