I always interview for "culture fit". In my experience, that's almost always the bottleneck, and the technical part is rarely a problem. Learning a new skill is not an earth-shattering problem if you have a good attitude towards work, and good interpersonal skills are a must in teams
tehwalrus|8 years ago
Did you mean "inter-personal skills"? The rest of your answer seems to suggest so. This is not the same as culture fit.
ebiester|8 years ago
I don't care what TV shows they're watching or the color of their skin, but I do care that they don't grate against testing a peer's ticket instead of thinking it's below them. I care that they are helpful as a human quality. I care that they are interested on working on a team that's highly collaborative.
There are places where I'm not a great cultural fit. If the team's culture is to take a problem, go off for months, and solve it, it's probably not for me, but I know people who would be overjoyed in that case. I know people who'd like nothing more to get a spec and deliver rather than gathering and implementing requirements based on conversations within the organization.
In some sense, that's people like me, but I was in turn hired because I fit those criteria. People who fit those criteria seem to be happy with the engineering portion of the job, and people who don't fit that criteria tend to be frustrated.
I use the word "cultural fit" but I'm not sure if there's a better term.
stuntkite|8 years ago
I'm a college dropout with 18 years of consulting and startup experience and they are all highly skilled academics. He even recognized that it was a backhanded compliment. The "culture fit" term has always bugged me, but it really came clear to me in this meeting. It's a useful cypher for exclusion on class and world view. I'm pretty sure that's not immoral or wrong, but I do think the concept is damaging to organizations that want an exceptional outcome. Turns out business is risky and basically runs on what can be predictable.
Working with people you like is really important and at high level jobs, there are few people that can transcend from outside orbits. The only reason I can involves a lot of hard fought failures and an ability to explain myself in documentation and method. A large amount of successful engineers have had a protected arc of experience that makes the unfamiliar grating and closes off dynamism that could come from people that don't whip ideas from the same pocket they pull from. Being an engineer seems to also be magnetically opposed to the nuances of human resources too. A lifetime of meditation on failure can sometimes nerf the poetry available in human experience.
I have no solution to it broadly. Stoked on the new job, it looks like I'll be in charge of hiring too. I have a good track record with it in my own org, but the stakes here are bigger. If I get proof of my method I'll report back, if I fuck it up I'll probably be fired for bad culture fit.
vidarh|8 years ago
My ex came to me in a rage the other day because the large bank she works for had produced a promotional video for HR purposes talking about success that was presented before a presentation on diversity, and where every single person interviewed from the bank was a white, blond male, while black people were only presented when cutting to news footage (e.g. of Obama etc.) - they apparently couldn't, or didn't want to, find a single black person or asian person in a workforce of tens of thousands that they could use...
The same bank created a promotional ad to hire more women in an Asian country last year where of 10 women, 9 were white blondes and only one was actually Asian.
And then they wonder why they don't get more black or asian people applying for jobs.
To top it up, they strongly prefer people from a small pool of schools that are expensive and strongly favor children of alumni to the extent that their preferred hiring pool already is very heavily skewed towards white upper class men.
Their "diversity team" works within that constraint: To have to try to capture the very small black and asian contingent that fits hiring criteria and a culture that is so strongly predisposed to them that even if they hired everyone that met the criteria and were willing, they'd not get close to achieving diversity in any meaningful sense.
It's a real problem that many places want things like "culture fit" without actually thinking about how they actually ue that.
Often even while putting together committees to try to solve specific hiring problems that can't do their job because the "culture" is holy and questioning whether or not it is being so narrowly construed that it causes extreme monoculture is often not acceptable...
(to be clear I'm not suggesting the person you replied to or others here are doing what the bank in question is doing - I just wanted to give an extreme example of what "culture fit" can lead to, even without it necessarily being the intent)
jonahx|8 years ago
More like: people who aren't going to grate on me, which is very different and encompasses a much larger set of people.
The "culture fit" strategy can no doubt be abused, but it's also wrong not to recognize that a technically brilliant hire can be terrible for the company if there are communication problems or personality conflicts.
j_s|8 years ago
This is a hot-button topic; I look forward to additional contributions here.
[yesterday] We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15591441 (2017Oct;596comments)
[one week ago] If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543371 (2017Oct;479comments)
crdoconnor|8 years ago
I've noticed that an emphasis on "culture fit" does tend to correlate with an ethnically & culturally homogenous workplace.
I think most of the candidates I've interviewed and recommended for hire that have been rejected for a vague/no reason have all been foreign.
IMO hiring for culture fit is fine provided you're willing to be very specific and state directly to the candidate's face what aspect of your desired 'culture fit' that they failed.
dahart|8 years ago
I remember hearing about a study that success in engineering graduate school is better predicted by the GRE writing scores than by the math scores. So could general communication ability be more important than engineering ability when it comes to job performance (on average, across all people & jobs)? Is it possible that both "cultural fit" and "interpersonal skills" are both trying to get at whether someone is a good communicator who emphasizes getting along with the people around them?
mlashcorp|8 years ago
humanrebar|8 years ago
Depends on the problem. If you're cranking out brochure websites from a set of templates, you have a pretty accessible role to fill.
But I have many colleagues who make mistakes (even when people object clearly), dig a hole for themselves, double down on the mistake, and the either back their way into job security with their mess or end up moving on once the chickens come home to roost. Some of the time, I can even see their eyes glaze over as I try to get them to think a few more moves ahead in their plan.
Now, organizations should have safe roles for journeyman engineers who crank out and maintain code as directed, but most organizations expect all senior engineers to be part time system design experts, which I don't think everyone has the knack for. Likewise, not everyone is a great communicator and strong enough technically to be accurate in their communication.
crispyambulance|8 years ago
The problem is that most organizations are terrible, TERRIBLE at evaluating candidates. They forget that interviewing candidates is a skill in itself that needs to be developed and needs to be consistent across the organization.
Moreover, these same organizations fail to "close the feedback loop" when it comes to evaluating employee performance. The "annual review" data can be put to good use by informing hiring decisions. Instead annual reviews are just an irritating burden used for the purpose of carving up the raise/bonus pie. It is basic engineering... evaluate your outputs (employees), then use that data to adapt to your inputs (candidates). But virtually no one does it, because its all tied up in HR-bullshit instead.
BeetleB|8 years ago
Your making the parent's point for him. This is a behavioral problem. Hence, screening for culture fit.
richmarr|8 years ago
(a) How do you define and assess "culture fit", and why?
(b) How do you know the things you're optimising for are actually good proxies for productivity?
Appreciate these aren't questions with simple answers (or maybe even answers at all), but hiring/assessment process is my current field and I'm always curious where peoples thinking is at.
Spooky23|8 years ago
It’s an approach that isn’t perfect but is good enough for many roles. We pick spouses based on that approach and it works out pretty well for most people.
Double_a_92|8 years ago
fairpx|8 years ago