“Cultural fit” has long been a staple of recruitment language. At face value, it sounds reasonable — the idea that a new hire should be able to work comfortably within the existing norms of a business. But as hiring practices evolve, so too must the concepts we rely on.
In too many cases, “fit” has become shorthand for “similarity”. And when it governs who we hire — or don’t — it can limit innovation, restrict diversity of thought, and lead to unintentional exclusion.
Cultural alignment does matter. But the way many organisations define and assess it is rarely consistent. What one panel sees as “fit”, another interprets as “chemistry” or “gut instinct”. It’s vague by design — and that’s precisely the problem.
When hiring decisions are based on whether someone “feels like one of us”, we’re no longer measuring capability. We’re measuring comfort. And when we prioritise comfort, we overlook challenge. That’s where the risk lies.
Take Basecamp, a US software company that saw a third of its staff resign in 2021 following a top-down push to remove social and political conversation from internal communication. The decision was framed as a move to protect culture. What it revealed instead was a narrowing of acceptable expression. The fallout wasn’t just reputational; it cost the business some of its most experienced talent.
The lesson isn’t that culture shouldn’t be protected. It’s that culture needs to be questioned — and hiring for sameness rarely strengthens it.
Forward-thinking organisations are shifting from “culture fit” to “culture contribution”. The distinction matters.
Rather than asking, “Will this person fit in here?”, hiring panels are encouraged to ask, “What will this person add to how we think, work and lead?”
That change in framing opens the door to candidates who don’t match the current mould — but who bring a valuable new dimension.
Monzo, one of the UK’s leading digital banks, has moved deliberately in this direction. Their hiring framework emphasises alignment with company values, not personality or background. In interviews, candidates are asked how they’d approach specific scenarios, not whether they “get on well with others”. It’s subtle, but it changes the outcome — and it’s helped Monzo build a leadership team that’s notably more diverse than many of its fintech peers.
The most common argument for hiring based on fit is team cohesion. But there’s a point at which cohesion becomes groupthink.
In highly aligned teams, dissent is often seen as friction. But dissent, when managed properly, is where insight emerges. Strategic blind spots, operational inefficiencies, flawed assumptions — these are rarely spotted by people who all agree.
A McKinsey report published in 2023 highlighted this point clearly. Companies with higher levels of leadership diversity (across both identity and professional background) were significantly more likely to deliver above-market returns over a five-year period. The reason? Broader perspective equals sharper decision-making.
This isn’t about abandoning all instincts. But if organisations want to reduce bias and improve decision quality, they need to tighten the link between interview impressions and business relevance.
Instead of asking vague questions about whether someone “feels right”, interviewers should probe:
Fit should be treated like any other hiring criterion: it must be defined, tested and justified.
Boards and senior leaders have an important role to play. When executives talk openly about the value of constructive challenge and difference — and back that up in how they hire — it changes the culture more broadly.
In 2020, Unilever adjusted its leadership development programme to include explicit focus on inclusive decision-making styles. The move wasn’t made for PR. It came off the back of internal analysis showing that overly aligned leadership groups were struggling to adapt to rapidly changing markets.
That kind of self-awareness — and the willingness to act on it — is what separates resilient firms from those simply repeating themselves.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with valuing cohesion. But cohesion shouldn’t come at the expense of adaptability. When hiring decisions favour comfort over difference, organisations become inward-facing, risk-averse and slower to respond.
Culture isn’t about preserving a fixed way of being. It’s about shared values, evolving behaviour and the capacity to grow together.
Fit has its place — but it shouldn’t be the only place we look.
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