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For many business organizations, culture is becoming a larger concern for hiring than finding the applicant with the best skills to do the job. Skills remain important, however, the focus is beginning to shift from hiring only candidates that are matched well for the position by skills alone and to candidates that they are likely to bond with on a personal level, at least based on the findings of one recent study. That’s a good thing according to Nancy Rothbard, associate professor of management at The Wharton School who says: “Cultural fit is incredibly important on a candidate’s abilities to use his skills.” “You have a positive effect through skills, but culture completely cancels that out,” Rothbard says.
Definition of “Dream Candidate” is Changing
Once upon a time, most business owners and HR hiring staff had this mental picture of the dream candidate. This would be the candidate the company would go for broke to hire, whether it was someone with Ivy League credentials or a list of collegiate accomplishments a mile long. On the flip side of that coin, these candidates often lacked the social skills necessary to “fit in” with the existing company culture.
Lauren A. Rivera, assistant professor of management and organizations and sociology (Northwestern University) is the author of a recent study: “Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms” that examined cultural fit as a hiring decision criteria.The study, which is published in the December 2012 issue of American Sociology Association, included research from interviews of 120 hiring professionals of graduate and undergraduate candidates in top tier management consulting firms, law firms, and investment banks. 40 interviews were conducted in each of the three aforementioned industries.
The responses revealed that while these hiring professionals are hiring candidates who are qualified to do the jobs, they aren’t always choosing the one who is most qualified. Instead, they are selecting people they feel they’d want to be friends with, or “hang out with”. Candidate evaluators at these firms indicated that they often trumped their personal feelings of excitement, comfort, and validation, over selecting candidates with superior technical or cerebral skills.
Is this Always a Good Thing?
There is one potential problem with the findings of this study, according to Rivera. While it’s generally good to focus on creating a certain company culture, if likability alone is the primary consideration when making hiring decisions a great deal of diversity is excluded. Companies need a few dissenting voices in order to challenge products and cultural diversity in order to help them appeal to larger audiences. There’s a lot of room for class bias to come into the mix if companies aren’t careful.
Determining Cultural Fit
Cultural fit will be different from one company to the next. Identifying candidates who will make a good fit, within the existing organization of the company, is one of the primary purposes of interviews. For instance, someone who works best alone will not thrive within an organization that is more team-oriented. Employees who need constant micromanagement will not do well in organizations that believe in personal accountability and allow employees a great deal of leeway and empowerment. Management employees who believe in a militaristic approach (orders should be followed without question) will not thrive in organizations where employees are accustomed to providing input, feedback, and constructive criticism.
With this in mind, it’s important that hiring professionals are aware of the existing company culture or planned changes to the company culture and ask questions that discover how well candidates are able to fit into that particular culture.
The bottom line is that it is wise to find people who fit into the company culture, as long as they have the necessary skills and qualification to do the job. However, hiring professionals need to really assess whether they’re hiring a person because they can connect with that person on a social level or because that person really is the best match for the company culture and the job they’re being hired to perform.
