All About That Fit
I often advise organizations to hire based on fit, rather than experience, but then I always add some caveats. Hiring for fit does not mean hiring someone like you. It doesn’t mean just looking for someone you’re comfortable with, or someone you enjoy hanging out with during a 30-minute interview. Hiring for fit means hiring the person who fits the culture you’re trying to create.
Interviews, the way most people do them, are not good at this. Often, what an interview tells us is how good a conversationalist someone is. If the job includes a lot of conversation, that may be valuable, but it certainly isn’t everything. The most important goal of any hire is to find someone who makes your team better. That depends, to a large extent, on the answers to a few key questions:
Are they willing and able to work hard and pull their weight--and occasionally a little more?
Are they empathetic and people smart--especially at times of stress and conflict?
Are they good at, and excited about, learning and teaching?
Do they believe in your mission and the change you’re trying to make in the world?
It’s hard to get the answers to these questions. If you structure an interview carefully, you may get some clues. If you learn how to read between the lines of a reference letter or a CV, you might get a hint or two. Ideally, you’ll talk to their past supervisors, and if you’re lucky they’ll be candid (or transparently cryptic). And maybe you can arrange some kind of working interview to see them in action with your team, though that can be hard to pull off.
In truth, you have to do all of these things, and more. Then, after you hire someone, you have to evaluate them carefully, especially during the probation period where you can do something about it if someone isn’t a good fit. Yes, early termination is hard on everyone. Yes, you really want to be done with this whole hiring process and all the time and energy it takes. But doing it wrong will be a lot more trouble in the end than cutting your losses and starting over.
Hiring the right people is the quickest, surest way of building the right culture--and culture is everything.
