While an employee’s experience and abilities contribute to their success in a role, how well they fit into your company’s culture is equally crucial. Assessing how well a candidate might fit in comes down to understanding your company’s culture and asking the right interview questions.

However, though cultural fit matters, it may be better to evaluate if a candidate is a good cultural add for your company instead of looking for someone who’s a perfect fit.

Culture Fit vs Culture Add

Hiring for culture fit is important. You want employees who share your company’s values and will work toward accomplishing its mission. However, it may be better to hire someone who’s a culture “add,” rather than a perfect fit.

Fit Doesn’t Guarantee Function

Your employees need to get along and work well together to form a cohesive team that accomplishes tasks and goals with minimal conflict. However, a team that gets along and fits together doesn’t guarantee it gets results.

The thing about hiring for culture fit is that you risk hiring the same person over and over. Each new hire may look different, but they tend to approach their duties similar to the rest of the team. While that makes it easier for the new hire to fit in, they may also possess the same flaws your current team has.

When you hire for a culture add, your new employee still fits in with the team but approaches tasks and problems differently. This difference can help your existing team see the blind spots it might be missing and become a better functioning team.

Diverse Teams Perform Better

Hiring for culture add vs culture fit also tends to result in more diverse teams, and diverse teams often have better overall performance than less diverse teams. Research has shown that diverse teams are generally more innovative, more profitable, and solve problems faster than less diverse teams.

Reinforce Bias

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Often, when companies focus on cultural fit, they hire the person who gets along the best with the team. But that person isn’t necessarily the most qualified for the role.

While unintentional, when you focus more on culture fit vs culture add, there’s the chance you’re reinforcing existing biases within your organization and possibly discriminating against candidates.

Know Your Culture

Before interviewing candidates, take some time to assess and understand your company’s culture.

Start by asking yourself what you think the company’s culture is. Then, talk to your leadership team, managers, and even individual contributors to see what they think it is. Have them identify a few top ideas and ask them how the team accomplishes them.

For example, if collaboration is a recurring theme, dig deeper to discover how your company collaborates. How do team members collaborate within their team and across teams? What kind of communications do they use to stay in sync? Do teams brainstorm and work together every step of the way, or does each person contribute one part to the greater whole?

10 Questions to Ask Candidates

Once you know what your company’s culture is and how your employees contribute to it, you’ll know which traits, skills, and abilities to look for in candidates.

Below are 10 sample questions you can ask candidates to assess their cultural fit, but there is no “right” answer to any of these questions. What you’re looking for is an answer that helps you better understand how a candidate will fit into the company and role.

1. Tell me about a time at work when you didn’t agree with a situation or decision. How did you handle it?
2. What are your career goals, and how have they changed throughout your career?
3. Tell me about a time you were assigned a task you didn’t feel confident you could handle. How did you approach it?
4. Have you ever missed a crucial goal or deadline? What happened, and how did you handle it?
5. What excites you most about the role?
6. What’s your preferred work style? Given a choice, how much time would you prefer to work alone or as part of a team?
7. When you work as part of a team, which role are you most likely in and why?
8. What are/were the positive and negative aspects of your job?
9. How do you handle multiple projects with different deadlines?
10. You’re offered a mentor when you join the team. What kind of style would you prefer they use?

Questions to Ask Yourself

In addition to asking questions that assess a candidate’s cultural fit, ask yourself a few questions about each candidate and their answers to help you better understand how they will positively impact your company.

1. What knowledge gaps will this person fill?
2. Will this candidate challenge our current processes in a way that helps us improve them?
3. Does this person represent a viewpoint the team or company is missing?
4. What skills or abilities does this person have that we’re lacking and could benefit from?

Adding on May Be a Better Fit

Ultimately, finding someone who fits in and brings something new to the role is the best bet for your company. It can lead to stronger outcomes for your business and help it be successful in the long run.

Antenna: Moving Flex Forward