Ask HN: How do companies go about getting cultural fit with a candidate?

What does that actually mean?

Well, for instance, someone who wants or needs to be told exactly what they're expected to do and how to do it is not a good cultural fit for us - we need people who can show initiative and direct their own work.

Someone who wants to work 6pm-2am is also not a good cultural fit. While we offer some flexibility in work hours, we rely too much on reasonably-synchronous communication (aka slack) for collaboration.

And we can't hire selfish or self-important assholes, because they're toxic and will ruin morale.

All the rest (beer or wine or non-drinker? Loves basketball? Plays an instrument?) is beside the point and usually just an excuse for various types of otherwise illegal discrimination. Hire someone who's capable of acting like a professional when in the office. Someone who can be courteous and communicates well. Once your company is past the size where you can all fit in a sedan at one time, you don't need to all be best friends.

How would you approach solving <insert some problem>? Dig into their solution for its technical merits, downsides, pitfalls, etc. But, more importantly, pay attention to how they react when they are challenged, whether they overcomplicate things or whether they hand-wave around real problems. Do they know when to say "it depends" or "I don't know"?

You can get a "right" answer and still "fail" the test. My feedback will basically be, "This person is smart and I can't justify saying 'no' but..."

The "cultural" question is "Do you want to work with this person?" So try working with them not at them.

Avoid strong opinions even if you're asked. The interviewers themselves may be crapping on emacs, PHP, design patterns or whatever so you may be tempted to voice your own, but it doesn't go both ways. Don't get too comfortable.

You'll be offered coffee. Drink it. Don't refuse beer either. Fake a liking if need be. After work drinks are mission critical.

Make sure you're not too fat nor too old nor too Indian. If you're a woman, look your best and practice your natural makeup skills.

"What are your hobbies? / What do you like to do on your free time?" don't mean what you think they mean. "Spending time with my family" or "reading" are not valid answers. The only valid answers are the ones that imply you like working for free (Github, OSS, and the like.) Bonus points for consecutive green squares.

Don't talk badly about former colleagues. This is the biggest red flag.

The answer lies more in making your company somewhere where anyone can excel, then looking for people who show empathy in your interview process.

Here are some things we do: https://www.haplo-services.com/blog/2017/working-with-early-...

The post focuses on early stage developers, but I believe the principles stand at all levels.

First, we make sure that every interviewer, including initial contacts and phone screens, offers the candidate a chance to ask their own questions and I make it a point to state that "you're picking us just as much as we're picking you". From the questions the candidate asks, we get some insight into what's on their mind and they get their questions answered and can form a more informed opinion of us as well.

Second, we generally schedule an informal lunch in our cafeteria (we buy, of course) with the candidate and a 1-3 of our engineers, often from the team they're interviewing with but sometimes just other non-team peers. This is explicitly meant to be informal and similar-level peers, but you can't help sharing data about who we are, how we interact with each other and the candidate, and learning/teaching whether there's likely a good fit.

If you're asking about creating/enhancing cultural fit once hired, that's an ordinary leadership challenge.

When she quit, they asked her what it would take for her to stay. She asked for an equality policy and BOOM! A big cheque fell in her lap and they thanked her for her contribution.

I was caught a bit off-guard when the interview pivoted towards inclusion and diversity. I stumbled through some questions which, in hindsight, were geared around determining if I was a "brogrammer". The questions were very open-ended like: "How do you deal with diversity?" and "How do you accommodate other's working styles?"

Speaking with HR after the interview the company their definition of "cultural fit" was much broader than just work or programming style. The company is extremely interested in building a talent pool that is diverse in all ways (age, gender, ethnicity, etc...) and viewed the engineering practices as something that can be taught.

Their belief, if you invest in good people who like their jobs then they will build good products. And if those products are good then the company will make money.

For me, it's always been just to make sure the person isn't toxic to other employees

From some other comments I skimmed: I think it's a bonus if you have opinions on software. I want to hire people that challenge the team to grow and challenge me to grow with their differing opinions. It is very important as to how that opinion is conveyed though.

In my experience it's useful for teams to share some "culture" -- some shared expectations so not everything has to be communicated explicitly.

On the other hand, it's kind of useful that different teams have different cultures and some between-teams attrition goes on in meetings related to larger projects. Think "marketers versus engineers". It's important that these mutually contradicting views clash!

Also: I've had the bad experience of the buddy-chuminess of team culture gradually drift into flirting and then into unsustainable sexual tension, complete with big fight and months of really bad communication. But note this: we've been able to work through all that storm, and now we're on pretty good speaking and collaboration terms. This only worked because we were cogs in a seven-ish-cog-machine and the machine could grind on with insufficient lubrication between two cogs. (This is a bad analogy because it seems that the more cogs the better, but there's a sweet spot...)

"There's no "cultural fit" requirement. If you have a skill we like and you can learn and work with a team, you'll get on fine here. You'll be our company culture, and we welcome your contribution."

Before coming up with a solution, the first step should always be defining the problem.

This could be worth running a workshop with the people you know are good cultural fits to come up with this trait-list.

In an interview (real-world application), similar to Google's layover test, I would suggest randomly picking people in the office to have an informal (but guided) chat around interests and everything after the fact of the candidate being competent enough to actually do the work.

As soon as that meeting concludes, send a form to all employees in that interview to rate against the traits you've defined.

Come up with a score tactic, if you want, and anything above, let's say 85%, is a fit.

Side note: You can be specific in your choice of words in the job posting to make it more likely that you attract the right type of people.

You'll want the interview team to assess the candidate with that criteria mind. Probe important areas, such as learning-style, interpersonal communication, and decision-making.

Ultimately, you're trying to answer the question "Can we live with this person?"

A more positive way to think of it could be to search for people who work well as a team, treat others fairly regardless of their role, like/employ transparency and so on.

Then again I don't think we've ever used the exact term "cultural fit" in my team.

Newsworthy culture fit problems at e.g. uber could have been solved out of the gate by not hiring those pesky women. They bring the majority of culture-fit litigation.

Sometimes you can't tell if someone is not biologically male just by looking, so consider also supporting anti-trans legislation in your municipality.