Culture fit has traditionally been a fundamental part of the recruitment criteria. However, more recently this element is being dropped from the hiring wish list.

The “culture fit” element is specifically coming from the ongoing expectations of hiring leaders that candidates/new hires should be from:

- set educational establishments and education levels,

- set socio-economic, political, racial and religious groups (never directly voiced of course but the bias is usually easy to spot)

- set age demographics

- set industry sectors, etc

All of these elements are examples that have arguably nothing to do with likely values, predictable behaviours, calibre of skills, depth of experience and reliable performance. Hiding these elements under the guise of “culture fit” means companies wind up minimising options for new thinking and ideas, challenging the status quo to enable continuous improvement, opening up diversity of thought and representation, and opportunities for disruption to gain a competitive edge.

A good example – hiring leaders within tech sector companies who veer away from hiring people over 55 years old into key jobs, on the basis that those candidates won’t be a culture fit to the “need it now” pace of day to day work, they won’t have the necessary learning agility, and they won’t have the level of tech savvy needed….a lot of nonsense really does get packaged up as “culture fit” and if companies are serious about broadening their appeal to candidates, and getting the very best performers possible, those companies need to check how they’re assessing for “culture fit”. Another example – banks and pharma companies who insist on industry sector experience and a level of education (done 30 years ago) because that is supposedly an indicator of a person’s potential for “culture fit”.

Over and over again, the better companies we work with globally have all reported a marked difference for the success and quality of hiring, once hiring leaders start to flex on their traditional criteria for “culture fit” and we only wish that more people were addressing this issue!

However, having a focus on continuous improvement along with an inherent curiosity plus high emotional intelligence in addition to other behaviours and values are all excellent examples of criteria for candidates that companies should be focussing on to positively contribute to a consistent company wide culture that enables creative and commercial advantages.