Recently, many companies have switched from the culture fit hiring approach to culture add. However, for an organization focused on hiring people who fit into your culture easily, changing your focus can be a challenge. Not to mention, it can be difficult to see the worth of culture add if you’re not sure how it works.
If you’re in this scenario, you don’t have to worry. This article compares culture add and culture fit, providing enough details for you to make an informed decision. We’ll also provide a guide for introducing culture add to your recruitment seamlessly.
But before we kick off…
What is culture fit?
Culture fit, also known as cultural fit, is a hiring strategy in which the company recruits candidates who can easily fit into its already existing culture. The recruits can adapt quickly to the company’s existing values, environment, behavioral patterns, and regulations.
The principles of the culture fit approach are strict, leaving little to no room for new values or cultures in the workplace. Not to mention, the new hires are extremely similar to other employees in regard to their skills, professional goals, and values. Due to their behavioral uniformity, the old and new employees work better together, facilitating efficient communication and productivity.
Hiring for culture fit is a practice that’s almost as old as hiring itself, with employers aiming to hire candidates who align with their values and are easier to work with. The idea is that this way, there’d be less conflict of interest and more functionality. However, this is all in theory, and the similarities don’t always equate to a higher work rate.
What is culture add?
Culture add, on the other hand, takes a more liberal approach to hiring. Fundamentally, this practice involves employers recruiting candidates with different backgrounds, values, and behaviors, leaving room for diversity of interest and reasoning.
The culture add hiring approach recognizes the importance of hiring candidates who align with your company’s values and goals. However, it also considers the need for cultural diversity and individuality among employees.
With this hiring approach, employers can find candidates who have their personalities and values but can also adapt to the company’s. This creates room for growth, innovation, and unique perspectives among employees.
What are the benefits of culture add and culture fit?
Both culture add and culture fit are undoubtedly beneficial to organizations. In this section, we will directly compare the merits of those to spotlight which has more to bring to the table:
What are the limitations of culture add and culture fit
Before making the decision between culture add and culture fit, you must consider their limitations alongside their advantages. Cultural fit may limit diversity and creativity in the workplace, while culture add can create challenges with team dynamics.
Understanding these potential issues ensures you’re properly informed and can make the choice that benefits you best with little to no demerits. Here are the potential limitations of culture add and culture fit:
Why should you hire for culture add instead of culture fit?
Picture a company focused solely on hiring candidates with similar values, professional goals, and experiences who can easily fit into its existing culture. For one thing, all the employees would seem almost identical, which could come with its benefits, but the demerits can’t be overlooked.
In this scenario, imagine a team in that company is faced with a new challenge. They all move to tackle it from the same perspective, and it doesn’t work. Not only does this decrease productivity, but it leaves little room for company progress, which can obstruct long-term goals. Combine this with reduced creativity and the risk of bias in hiring, and you will find that hiring for culture fit alone can be very detrimental.
Findings from Gallup show that only 33% of U.S. employees were actively engaged in their workplace. This is a significant cause for concern as low employee engagement, a consequence of hiring solely for cultural fit, could lead to high turnover rates and hiccups in organizational processes.
Fortunately, you can prevent this by setting culture add at the forefront of your recruitment. Hiring for culture add allows you to have a diverse and inclusive workforce, a quality valued by nearly 80% of employees, according to a CNBC survey.
Beyond fostering creativity and innovation, making room for diversity in your company provides a platform for employees to challenge themselves to function at their best. This ensures your employees are always at the top of their game, learning new ways to merge their different views to solve complex company issues.
In addition, hiring for cultural fit gives your company plenty of room to grow and adapt to new trends and market demands as they arise. As a result, your company would be future-proof, equipped with creative employees with extensive problem-solving skills.
How to test for culture add
When done correctly, the culture add hiring approach can help you strike a balance between hiring candidates who can fit into your company culture and creating room for diversity. How well you implement this depends on your candidate screening method.
The good news is that there are numerous ways to test for culture add in recruitment, and in this section, we’ll be discussing them.
1. Diverse interview panels
Unlike regular one-time physical or online interviews, diverse interview panels comprise interviewers with different backgrounds, races, ages, and experiences. Although this panel would have a structure for interviewing candidates, it allows these diverse interviewees to interact directly with the candidates and screen them.
The result of this process is a more inclusive interview environment where the candidates can be assessed properly from different angles. Also, candidates would be more comfortable in the presence of a person whose experience or identity they relate to. This lets them express themselves better, preventing errors in screening due to candidate nervousness.
2. Trial projects or workdays
Close to the end of your screening process, you can assign your candidates trial projects to work on or working days. This would give them a chance to see your company structure and culture in real time. It also lets you see how the candidates interact with your employees and how they approach projects.
When screening candidates with trial projects or workdays, here are some things you should look out for:
- Unique problem-solving approaches.
- Ability to collaborate with their team while offering fresh perspectives and ideas.
- Positive impact on team dynamics.
In the end, these workdays or trial projects can help you determine whether or not a candidate fits your culture add needs before hiring them.
3. Scenario-based questions
In your screening process, you can apply scenario-based questions to assess how well candidates can comport themselves and handle challenging situations. These questions, also known as situational questions, paint hypothetical scenes for the candidate to demonstrate how they’d apply their skill in such a scenario.
You can use scenario-based questions as situational interview questions, screening test questions, and even in your initial application process.
4. Skills and experience mapping
Skills and experience mapping, or simply skills mapping, involves visualizing employees’ skills and experiences within your organization. Aside from its primary benefit of helping you identify skill gaps within your organization, this process also lets you understand your company culture.
You can apply skills mapping at the start of your hiring strategy, as the insights on your company’s culture can help you know what skills, values, and experiences you need. This way, you can properly screen candidates and hire those that meet your requirements.
5. Reverse interviews
This type of interview, as the name implies, involves having the candidates ask the interviewers questions. The concept behind this is to allow you to see how candidates think and how well they can communicate as well.
When properly performed, you will know more about the candidate’s cognitive skills, giving you insight into their curiosity and potential cultural contributions to your company.
6. Reference checks with a culture add focus
This screening strategy is especially useful when resume screening, but you can also apply it in your hiring if you’re not using resumes. Essentially, it works the same as normal reference checks, which involve checking the candidate’s past jobs, calling past employers, and checking if they truly have the experience they claim.
To give your reference checks a culture add focus, ask questions about:
- The candidates’ past contributions to their former teams.
- Past projects or tasks they handled commendably and their thought process when finding a solution for the project.
- How well they relate with their former teams.
By asking the right questions, you can perform a thorough reference check centered around culture add and professional development.
7. Use pre-employment tests
Screening for culture add involves looking out for indicators that a specific candidate has the perfect job fit and can align their creative ideas to meet your company’s needs. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through skill assessments.
Skill testing lets you measure your candidates’ skills and gauge their fit for a role by asking valid questions designed for that specific purpose. However, it might be difficult to execute this when hiring for culture add. Thankfully, Vervoe can help you integrate excellent pre-employment tests into your hiring to boost its effectiveness.
Vervoe is a pre-employment assessment software that gives you access to comprehensive assessments comprised of relevant testing questions. This tool uses scenario-based questions to check how the candidates would respond to scenarios if they were hired. As such, it lets you see how well they can apply their creativity and cognitive reasoning to ideate new solutions to problems.
The best part is that Vervoe grades all your candidates based on the same criteria, thus giving them an equal chance to show how fit they are for the role. Also, you can personalize your grading system to mark the candidates according to your company’s standards. In the end, the system ranks your candidates based on their performance, providing you with enough data to make better hiring decisions.
Since Vervoe is an online platform, it allows you to screen candidates from any location. You can also use it at any stage of hiring, such as during interviews or even the application process. And you can rest assured that the grading system remains unbiased and reliable whether you’re testing one or 1,000 candidates.
Hiring for culture add has never been easier!
Implementing a new hiring approach requires proper planning, effective tools, and little to no errors. For companies switching from hiring for culture fit to culture add, recruitment efficiency is even more important to avoid issues like hiring bias. Fortunately, with Vervoe, you’ve got nothing to worry about.
From our vast assessment library to individual testing features like realistic job simulations, hiring for culture add is easy. Even more, you can customize the assessments and tests according to your needs so your candidates are adequately tested based on your own criteria. Curious about how this works? Sign up for a demo, and let’s show you how!
