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How to hire for culture fit

3 Lessons 10 minutes completion time

What you'll learn:

You’ll learn how to assess your culture, build an interview guide, conduct and score a cultural interview, and add value to the hiring process.

Building your cultural interview

What kind of culture do you have? If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. Many companies don’t have a defined culture. The Predictive Index’s Design module can help you determine your culture through what we call “Team Types.” Team Types are essentially the ‘average’ of every team member’s behavioral preferences. You can explore them in the interactive at the bottom of the page.

You can use Team Types to target the culture and behaviors you want your employee to emulate. For example, if you need timely and accurate work above all else, you probably want a team in the Stabilizing quadrant. If you’re trying to expand into new markets, then you’ll need courage and innovation—perfect for the Exploring quadrant.

No matter what Team Type is right for you, we recommend purposeful and explicit cultural evaluations. First, determine what culture you need for your team’s business strategy. Then, ask each candidate cultural questions and request that managers score the answers on a 1-to-5 scale. That will help ensure each team excels at its role—which, in turn, will propel your organization forward.

Culture Fit vs. Culture Add

When you hire for a candidate’s fit with your culture, you ensure the candidate is aligned with your organization’s core values and norms.

The problem is, your established culture sometimes needs to change or grow. Likewise, sometimes you need a dissenting voice in the room.

That’s why we recommend hiring for “cultural addition.” In other words, when you hire a new employee, don’t just think about whether or not they fit the culture. Think about how they add to the culture.

For example, suppose a company’s culture is very fast-paced and adventurous. However, they keep running into problems: no one ever stops to document anything and all the company’s processes are a mess.

In this situation, you might consider hiring someone slower-paced and more deliberate, even though they’re not a strict cultural fit. That’s hiring for cultural addition.

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