These days more and more companies are looking for cultural fit. But, what exactly does this mean? And, how does one go about measuring the fitness? Is it by asking the right types of questions or is it the attributes that one draws from some superficial bias? It seems cultural fit is a nice way of diplomatically labelling all the things that a company cannot state in a straightforward way, in case it comes out politically incorrect. Cultural fit really means whether the team likes one as an individual, not whether one can do the job. It can boil down to a lot of tongue and cheek nonsense as well as possibly just gibberish of managerial buzz of what they think is the feel of the culture. It is almost like whether they class one as the in crowd, a bit like at school where everyone hung around with their own type of people. Cultural fit is no real indicator of whether the person will perform or even add any value. They could even be culturally unfit when they join. Managers often devise strange ways of measuring recruitment processes and they have equally more bizarre practices of retaining staff as well as keeping them satisfied. The relative buzz of a company may be its culture. But, if the company is not doing well and has no direction then that is also a spontaneously combustible culture to have with very little in way of positive growth. Some companies go so far as to look for so called culturally fit individuals that they basically end up with a bunch of useless rejects with no direction, skills and the business goes belly up. With so many directionless and overpaid managers, is it any wonder we are seeing economic meltdown and uncertainties for businesses.
