Ep04: How to recruit for culture fit (hint: don’t!)

In this episode, Business Psychologist (and lead consultant at Oblong), Leanne Elliott dispels the myths around recruiting for culture fit and explains how (and when) it can be the right strategy for recruiting great people.

We hope this is helpful… oh, and if you are recruiting right now, stay positive – the process might take longer these days, but great people are out there.

Let’s get stuck in.

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Al Elliott
Okay, so if someone’s listening to this and thinking shit, this is the way that I recruit at the moment based on culture fit, then what should they be doing differently? How do they pivot and transition to potentially a more reliable way of recruiting?

Hey, welcome to the truth lies and workplace culture podcast. This is a podcast for business owners who want to build high performing teams that genuinely care about the business you’ve built. I’m owl Elliot, and Leanne Elliott, and together, we co founded a consultancy called oblong, which is all about how you can get better people to have fewer surprises and grow faster. So today we are talking about culture fit and how to recruit for culture fit. So Leanne, who is by the way, our lead consultant, our expert, as scientist, got 14 years in the field, you got master’s degrees, you’ve got all kinds of qualifications, you’re our expert, you’re gonna be telling us all about how to recruit for culture fit. Is that fair?

Leanne Elliott
Yes, it is. And I think yes, no, I am. I’m business psychologists. And I’ve been working in people and culture for many years, both as a consultant and as a manager myself. Recruiting for culture fit don’t. Next question,

Al Elliott
thank you for listening. See you next time. So first of all, let’s just start off with the the basic question which I had to ask you, which is what is culture fit?

Leanne Elliott
I think to answer that, we first need to understand what culture is. And therein lies the biggest problem with recruiting for culture fit. There are more than 50 definitions of what organisational culture is, people can barely agree from as simple as you know, that famous quote, culture, it’s what we do around here, right through to thinking about more of the constructs or rituals or behaviours you expect to see within your culture, the values and beliefs. So unless you really understand the definition of culture, you’re choosing to adopt within your organisation and the organisational culture you have, and how that’s translated into your operations and processes. Then recruiting for culture fit is as useful as saying, I’m only going to recruit school peers because I hear they’re feisty.

Al Elliott
So back in the back in the day, when I was building my second business, I was reading lots and lots of books, Good to Great by Jim Collins, remote by the guy from 37 signals, all these plastic books, and they were kind of suggesting, oh, you recruit for culture fit you. Zappos was another one, I think, where they said that they encourage people to bring their friends into work with them. Now, I’m guessing that the science has moved on little bit, and maybe we’ve moved on as employers. So why would someone not want to recruit for culture fit these days,

Leanne Elliott
culture is undeniably an incredibly important part about organisations and organisational performance. Recruiting of a culture fit, however, is tricky. It’s not impossible, but it’s tricky. And the reality is, unless you are at that level of physical fitness, the level of the that couldn’t see it. And the reality is, unless you’re at that level of sophistication within your business, then it’s very difficult to reliably assess candidates knowledge, skills and abilities, their competencies within the context of your culture. So if you would have listened last week to the podcast, or yesterday, how often these come out the last episode, you would have heard us talk about recruitment and the science of recruitment. And a big part of the science of the recruitment is that the recruiting methods we have whether it be interviews, psychometrics work sample test, is that they offer predictions of future work performance. predictions of future work, performance vary. So we have over 100 years of research, and that research has identified roughly 30 predictors or recruitment methods that are predictive of job performance. And yes, one of them is culture fit

Al Elliott
before we go any further and just give us an idea of for people like me, you don’t really understand what predictors are. So can you give an example of a predictor? Yep. So

Leanne Elliott
job interviews, for example, are a predictor as a recruitment method that is predictive of future work performance. So its most simple terms. If a candidate performs well interview, then that’s going to predict a certain percentage of how well they’re going to perform on the job. Right. Okay.

Al Elliott
As you were saying that culture is potentially a predictor, but it’s nowhere near as important as people are putting people thinking

Leanne Elliott
culture fit is a predictor. But as I mentioned, then each predictor has different levels of variance in terms of how predictive it is. So we think about an ideal world would take a candidate through a process and be able to 100% predict with confidence that because they performed well on that process, they’re going 100% perform well on the job. It’s not quite that straightforward because people are complicated. They have free will behaviours, change contacts, etc. So we can only assign a certain percentage of predictability to each of these methods, in terms of the most predictive and consistently found to be the most predictive, or the best predictor of job performance is general mentor ability or IQ. And that’s predictive of about 42% of future job performance. If we compare that to other methods, such as employment interviews, which is very, very popular, that’s about 34%. Then we get into the more nitty gritty, some psychometrics integrity test, for example, is about 21%. Certain personality inventories are about 10%. So it drops further and further. culture fit is on the list, however, is count for less than 2% of future job performance.

Al Elliott
So if I’ve understood this correctly, then if I was to recruit 100, people, based on culture fit alone and nothing else, then only two of them are likely to pan out for me, because there’s a two. Yeah. Whereas if I predicted 100 people based on what was the top one you just mentioned,

Leanne Elliott
general mental ability or IQ. Okay, so if I was predict

Al Elliott
on IQ, then you’re saying that out of those 154 would work out

Leanne Elliott
42, roughly half, half of the candidates who perform well, in general manageability are going to perform well on the job, roughly, it’s not quite that straightforward, but is it is an idea of kind of the power of that method in terms of predicting future performance of candidates that is the most reliable.

Al Elliott
Okay, so if someone’s listening to this and thinking shit, this is the way that I recruit at the moment based on culture fit, then what should they be doing differently? How do they pivot and transition to potentially a more reliable way of recruiting?

Leanne Elliott
I think the first step and as we talked about last week, is to understand the role that you’re recruiting for and the the knowledge, skills and abilities or competencies, that that you need for the unit is going to enable somebody to perform well within that role and the function of that role within your business. Once you understand that, then you can look at different methods that are more predictive of future performance. And using a mixed methods approach. Again, as we chatted about last week. So general mental ability tests, IQ tests are very predictive employment interviews, and number two, integrity tests like metrics and using a combination of these methods that are more closely linked to the job, rather than the individual and their beliefs, which are less tangible. focusing your assessment methods on the competence and competencies you need for that job is going to be much more reliable method.

Al Elliott
So let me ask you, then let’s assume that, well, let’s just say that you were talking about Google or Zappos, I won’t use Amazon because they’ve got a negative culture, from what from what it appears, but Zappos has got a very clear culture, it appears if you can read a book on it. So is it okay for them to recruit on culture fit.

Leanne Elliott
So organisations that that that level of their, their understanding of their organisational culture, and much more sophisticated, in that it’s translated to every level of their business. So finding employees who can do a job is absolutely critical. Finding employees that can add to your culture is also important. And if you’re at a point where you feel your culture has reached that level of sophistication like Google, then it’s going to translate or transcend from kind of beyond culture fit and more than assessing competencies that are in line with your culture. So just like give you example. So in terms of recruiting, let’s say one of the core values of your company is to be bold, in the pursuit of new business, new customers, then, that value, if it’s embedded in the culture, then their leaders, the leaders of the business, and their teams would have agreed on what types of behaviours constitute being bold, with a clear and broad consensus of what these positive behaviours are. So just maybe thinking outside the box, being innovative in terms of expanding customer business, what they’ve also would have done is added those relevant tasks into the job description. So then, you know, task if your expectation of job is that you probably network and conduct outreach activities to identify new business opportunities. More so than that, it’s going to translate it into training and development operations. So let’s say for example, an organisation might have created a business development playbook with best practice examples or suggested communications template so how to pursue new business boldly. And then of course, you’re gonna have performance metrics in place as well that are going to make sure that people are kind of working towards that, that target in that case and to be bold. It’s authentic. It’s a lived in value of the business and the people and it’s woven into the fabric of that culture. So that level recruiting for people who are bold what is tangible? Because you understand what that means? It’s measurable, and therefore it’s going to be more predictive of job performance.

Al Elliott
Let me ask you, then, if, if you’ve got an organisation of a reasonable size, let’s say 50 people, which is, you know, not a small organisation, then do you think that the culture might vary depending on the function? For example, if you’re lucky, if you got a team of creatives, you want them to think outside the box, like you said, be creative. However, the same team of five people who do the accounts, you do not want them to be creative and think outside the box. So Can there be subcultures within an actual within an overall culture,

Leanne Elliott
they absolutely can be Yeah, called sub cultures or micro cultures, you do see it more so in larger businesses, but yeah, even, you know, organisation of 20 could have have micro cultures within the business as well. And that is a symptom of two things. Either one, the broader, overarching culture hasn’t been well defined. And or two, it’s not been embedded within the organisation within the managers within the behaviours within the processes. So the reason those micro cultures appear, is going to be because each manager has a different interpretation of how that element of culture translates into operations. And that is going to vary in terms of positively having subcultures or micro cultures. I’m not sure I understand what you mean about how you don’t want your accountants to be overly creative. But at the same time, you want them to be creative within law, there’s going to be tax breaks or loopholes, or programmes or incentives that, you know, an accountant thinks outside the box, or as well research in their field are going to understand and bring to the the attention of the business owner. Yes, in terms of more creative fields, that carries a little bit less risk. And there’s a bit a bit more playful, perhaps. But the behaviours are the same, or the value is the same how those behaviours translate maybe subtly different between functions. But ultimately, it’s all part of the same value.

Al Elliott
So you have a great story, which I think we might even will tell before on the podcast about the janitor, this prefer, I think, I think this is going to be like a recurring theme as every time I bring up this story about the janitor, but you tell the story again? Because I think that

Leanne Elliott
Sure, yeah. So they there’s a story that goes around, maybe as urban legend, I don’t know. But that yeah, JFK was visiting NASA in the 60s when they were working in turn of the race to put a man on the moon. And the President turned to the janitor and said, What’s your role here? And the janitor said, I’m here to put a man on the moon. So sorry, to

Al Elliott
mouthful of water then. Yep. And I think that’s, I get the idea. I get I get culture now I do. Think culture was was all about, oh, you define it you sit there in a room, you define it? And then you go out and you write it on the wall? And everyone does it? And and obviously I can see that now. Are there any circumstances where it is okay to recruit for culture fit?

Leanne Elliott
culture fit alone? No, it’s not to be an element within your decisions. Yes, and particularly as the recruitment process goes on. So for example, if you’ve, you’ve defined your job very clearly, you’ve done a thorough job analysis, you’ve understood your competencies, you’ve designed a recruitment process that reliably and validly measures those you’ve assess candidates against a set criteria. And you’ve got two candidates who are matched dead on marks, then you might think a bit more about culture fit about values about the alignment of the individual with the values of your organisation, perhaps, but even then there’s an argument to pick the person who doesn’t fit your culture as much as you, you might think the other one does explain a bit more about that. So there’s a phenomenon in psychology called groupthink. And it basically means that groups that are very familiar, whether it be in an organisation or or outside of work, it the group is striving for consensus. And often in these environments, they’re very friction free, they’re very smooth. But there’s less critical thinking there’s less challenge, there’s less diversity of thought. And that itself can can squash things like creativity, innovation, or even just people going the extra mile consensus. Yeah, it would bring your quiet life as a leader, but it’s probably not going to be the best enabler of growth.

Al Elliott
So in that, we’re just thinking about that then. So if I’m recruiting for a, not necessarily a leadership position, this is someone who might be you know, a creative or something or might be a developer or something like that. Then I can totally see Say why culture is a bad idea to even consider culture unless it’s the very last differentiator, I can see that. But if you’re talking about what you just said, their leadership, so you’ve got someone who’s coming in as the creative director, and everyone else has got this groupthink, and they’re all like one one type of person, then from what you’re saying, it sounds like it’s bit more important to consider this idea of someone who is slightly different to the culture, if I misunderstood,

Leanne Elliott
you know, it’s that famous Einstein quote, isn’t it, it’s, we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. If you’ve always got that same thinking within your business, and you’re coming across challenges or roadblocks or performance that you can’t get over. This whole phenomena of groupthink is is not going to help you you need somebody who is going to be different, think about things differently, or inspire other people allow other people to think differently. Yeah, you need that, that dynamic environment, particularly in small businesses that are trying to grow.

Al Elliott
But then from I’m just thinking about what you said there, and groupthink doesn’t sound necessarily like a culture, just more that it just so happened, you have 15 people who or sim think similarly or is it a culture thing?

Leanne Elliott
Think it can be an element of culture? Yeah, not probably not a desirable one, it might be in some areas. So for example, if you work in, I don’t know, an area of compliance, for example, you might want everyone on the same page in terms of that level of governance. But yeah, even then, it’s, it’s more of a case that if you’re recruiting for culture fit in a way that is not done in a way that is not doing an organisation where the culture isn’t fully understood. People have with it, and it’s embedded within the operations and procedures in the organisation. The danger is, at best, you’re going to recruit people like you. And then if you recruit people like you, you’re going to be more susceptible to groupthink, you’re not gonna have that diversity of thought to solve the problems that are inherent in growing and growing a business.

Al Elliott
So give us your sort of 10 second synopsis. We’ve obviously said to start off by saying, Should you recruit for culture fit? And you said, No. But can you give us a little synopsis on why that’s a bad idea for anyone listening?

Leanne Elliott
Sure. So the reality is that culture fit is not a reliable way of predicting future job performance, it counts for less than 2% of future job performance. There are much better predictors out there, from general mental ability test. Symbol interviews are much more predictive of future job performance than culture fit is. And secondly, the issue with culture fit is it unless it is and I know I keep going on about this, but culture isn’t just values on the wall or how we do things around here. It is ingrained and embedded within every element of your organisation. And it promotes those positive behaviours that are reflective of that culture. If you are at that level, then recruiting recruiting for culture fit might work for you.

Al Elliott
Okay, so if you’re interested in learning a bit more about the roadmap that Leanne has talked about stage one form, go to our blog hq.com forward slash roadmap, there’ll be a link in the in the show notes. If you want Leanne to help you with your recruitment, then just send an email to Leanne at oblong hq.com and forget anything else you want to talk about with in terms of the podcast, which is feedback, getting you think you’re being a good guest. Great. We’ll definitely chat to you about that. Or anything else. Just email podcast at oblong hq.com Great. I think that’s the end of episode four. We haven’t decided where Episode Five is yet, so it’s gonna be surprised for all of us. But until then, bye bye. Bye now.