Why Cultural Fit is So Much More than "Nice to Have"

Recruiting the right people is like walking a tightrope. The team should have a high degree of diversity in order to remain innovative and competitive, but somehow everything has to fit "under one hat". That is why cultural fit recruiting is becoming increasingly important and we should pay great attention to it in the application process. For the company itself, the first thing to do is to define what its own culture is and what makes it stand out. Employer branding is an important indicator for applicants to examine the cultural fit. This brand promise must be kept, of course, if you don't want to damage your image in the long term.

But how do you find out whether the applicant him- or herself delivers what he/she promises in terms of personality and soft skills? Thanks to digitalisation, matching tools are now available that can clarify certain parameters in advance by e.g. anonymous questionnaires. Artificial Intelligence in recruiting and especially in pre-selection is on the rise - also when it comes to cultural fit. However, it is still the job interview that provides the best input and view on the cultural fit. There are a number of questions that allow recruiters to gain a deeper insight into the fit on the applicant side and that are therefore often asked in the interview:

• How do you feel about friendships at work?
• What are the most important motivating factors for you at work?
• Describe a perfect working day in your eyes.
• What bothers you most at work?
• How important is teamwork for you and where do you see disadvantages?
• Name three qualities that your current colleagues particularly appreciate about you.
• What would you like to see in a supervisor?
• When do you feel you have done a good job?

However, the cultural fit can also cause challenges. Sharing values means looking into the same direction. The danger is that the workforce will eventually become too homogeneous if everyone is too similar. The cultural fit should not only be about bringing people together with similar views and ways of working. It is obviously quite nice to always come to a consensus quickly and have very little friction. On the other hand, "operational blindness" increases and with it, the error rate, because there is a lack of thinking outside the box and challenging one another. What counts when it comes to a cultural fit is the attitude to work, the way of working, the expectations of the job and the interpersonal interaction and how this matches within the team.

Paying attention to cultural fit in the recruiting process is much more difficult than checking professional qualifications. Here it is important for managers to be able to read between the lines and listen to their gut feeling. Something that applies all the more to collaborating with personnel service providers, who do not directly experience the corporate culture of the company and still have to find the right candidates. Whether there really is the perfect match in the end, however, usually only becomes clear after a certain amount of time. Companies have the opportunity to minimise mistakes, for example, by including the future team in the recruiting process and through trial work days. In addition, an intensive on-boarding phase will do much to ensure that new employees quickly find their way around and can also answer the question of cultural fit for themselves.

How do you recruit the “right” people that fit into your company culture? (please comment below)