Culture fit as class signaling

A sociologist interviewed 120 people who did the hiring at elite banks, law firms and consultancies, and spent nine months observing one firm's recruiting department, to see how they actually chose new hires. She sat in on interviews, read evaluations, listened to how recruiters described the candidates they wanted. One phrase came up constantly: culture fit. On paper it sounds reasonable, hiring people who will work well with the team. But when she looked at what culture fit meant in practice, it turned out to mean shared leisure activities and background. Interviewers gravitated to candidates who played the same sports, enjoyed the same kinds of travel, came from the same sort of upbringing, people they would enjoy being stuck in an airport with. In other words, culture fit largely meant hiring people from the same social and economic class as the interviewer, dressed up as a judgement about values.

Culture fit, the criterion that feels most like protecting your team, is often just comfort in disguise, and comfort tracks background more than ability. When you hire the person who feels like one of us, you are frequently hiring the person who reminds you of yourself, which narrows your team and screens out difference without you noticing. Real fit is about shared standards and how someone works, not shared hobbies or upbringing. Before you reject someone as not a culture fit, ask whether you mean they will not do good work here, or simply that they are not familiar, because those are very different things.

Source: Rivera, Hiring as cultural matching: the case of elite professional service firms, American Sociological Review, 2012.

Pedigree

Lauren Rivera, 2015

Rivera's full study, on how elite firms mistake social similarity for merit.