There are many different methods of vetting potential job candidates: some companies look to put a body in a role, while others hire people with a similar personality as the organization’s current body of employees. The former is a terrible idea and leads to high turnover and low morale. The latter has some merit, under the right circumstances, and is called hiring for cultural fit.  

There’s another idea brewing, though: that you should hire candidates with traits that your organization is lacking, instead of hiring more of what you already have. This method is called hiring for culture add, and can transform your business culture into one of diversity, creativity, and ultimately, higher performance, by decreasing the homogeneity of your team. As Beamery phrases it: “What can a candidate bring to the table that will add to your culture and help move it in the right direction?” 

Setting an intention to hire for culture add is great – but how do you actually go about putting it into practice? Let’s find out! 

You have to know where you’re starting from, in order to know where to go  

You can’t determine what traits you should hire for if you don’t know what your current organizational culture looks and feels like. What values do your employees embody most? Is there a laid-back atmosphere, or a constant hum of busy hustle and bustle? Are your employees happy, or is there a tense undercurrent to everything that’s said and done? You need to really understand the good and bad of where you are now in order to grow. 

Once you know where you’re starting from, you can determine where you want the company to go, and look for candidates that embody those traits in their career and personal history. 

Recruit from outside your comfort zone 

Sometimes we get stuck in old habits that once worked for us, and the same is true of finding new employees. For example, employee referrals are great, but if you hire almost exclusively from employee referrals you risk homogenizing your workforce.  

This is when it can be really beneficial to have a recruiting partner that is experienced in finding talent. You can tell them what you traits and experience you need, what the job entails, and leave the rest to them. Recruiters typically have tricks of the trade that every day hiring managers might not know about. Professional recruiters are also removed from your internal business, so while they are a close partner, they are better able to see the whole picture and not get lost in the day-to-day minutia. 

Take a risk 

Take a chance on someone you might ordinarily have passed on. If a candidate has a strong background of problem solving, being a great communicator, and moving up in their past roles, it might be worth it to hire them, even if their background and methodologies are completely opposite of your existing staff.  

Bringing in employees with differing backgrounds and experience can radically change the way your team generates ideas, which is the whole premise behind hiring for culture add over culture fit. 

Understand there might be growing pains 

If you’ve recruited solely for cultural fit up to this point, it’s possible you have a team composed of very similar individuals that all get along nicely and work well together, with little friction. Adding in a new person that is qualified and talented, but thinks and work differently might throw things into chaos temporarily. It’s completely normal, and even expected. It might take some time for the team to wrap their heads around this new addition and their differences, but with proper leadership buy-in and time, they’ll come around.  

At Skywalk Group, we don’t hire people just to fill roles. Our recruiters take an exhaustive look at the candidate, the position, and the organizational culture they’d be coming into to make sure that he or she will not only fit the culture, but bring something unique to it as well. 

Hiring for culture add may take some changes in mindset and practice, but it’s well worth it!  

By Jessica Palmer