Hiring in tech is already difficult, with the huge talent gap coupled with alarming trends like quiet quitting and the Great Resignation.
By 2026, “90% of organizations will feel the pain of the IT skills crisis,” finds IDC, estimating over $5.5 trillion in losses as a result.
It’s a grim but widely accepted industry stat that the average shelf life of technical skills is a mere five years, 🤯 further exacerbating the talent acquisition problem.
On the other end, the ability to retain, engage, and leverage hired talent is getting tougher. In a recent survey by McKinsey, organizational leaders reported that culture is the most significant challenge to meeting digital priorities.
Experts find that one way to solve both the problems—of acquisition and retention of talent—is by nurturing team culture.
This can be done in two ways: You can hire people who are already aligned with your culture or hire those who shape it. In this blog post, we explore both.
So, let’s explore culture fit vs culture add and how you can use them to your advantage.
Culture Fit vs Culture Add: Balancing Team Compatibility and Diversity
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Culture Fit?
Culture fit is when an employee’s values, beliefs, and behaviors align with those of the organization. It emphasizes hiring individuals whose core values and work style complement the company’s mission and work environment.
Benefits of culture fit
Culture fit creates a group of like-minded people who believe in the same mission and are willing to work toward achieving common goals. The key benefits of this are:
Smoother collaboration: When people speak the same lingo and share common beliefs, it becomes easy to break the ice. This fosters deeper collaboration and easier conflict resolution.
Higher productivity: Good culture fit creates a positive work environment, enabling teams to ideate without fear and experiment openly. This improves the team’s collective productivity and efficiency.
Increased employee satisfaction: Employees who fit well with the company culture are likely to feel more engaged and fulfilled.
Lower turnover: When employees fit in with the organizational culture, they feel a sense of belonging, which encourages them to stay longer.
In financial terms, culture fit improves efficiency, productivity, and the ROI on talent. So, it’s no wonder that, for years, organizations have taken culture fit seriously. That doesn’t mean it’s not without its drawbacks.
Drawbacks of culture fit
But it’s not all sunshine and unicorns when everyone in your team completely buys into the culture.🦄
Homogeneity: Focusing too much on culture fit can lead to homogeneity, limiting diverse perspectives and innovation.
Bias: Hiring based on cultural fit can result in conscious/unconscious bias, where candidates with similar education, background, experience, etc. are preferred over those who are different.
Stagnation: A strong emphasis on culture fit may discourage new ideas and disrupt the flow of fresh perspectives necessary for growth.
Exclusionary practices: Insisting that every new employee fits in with the existing group can create an environment in which individuals who don’t perfectly align with the established culture feel excluded or marginalized.
To overcome these challenges, experts and business leaders have been rethinking culture fit entirely.
That’s not to say culture isn’t important; but that new employees shouldn’t be expected to fit into a rigid mould that exists.
With this thinking emerged the concept of culture add.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Culture Add?
As the name suggests, culture add focuses on hiring people who expand and elevate the culture. This means hiring for unique perspectives, experiences, and skills that complement and drive culture change rather than simply fitting into the status quo.
Benefits of culture add
Cultural add expands on the benefits of culture fit and minimizes its drawbacks. Here’s how.
Easier hiring: If you’re looking for engineering graduates to ensure culture fit, you might find it difficult to hire. However, if you’re looking for someone with engineering skills from any background for culture add, you expand the market, enabling easier hiring.
Diversity: Hiring for culture add brings different viewpoints and experiences, fostering a more diverse, inclusive and innovative environment.
Agility: A diverse and inclusive workforce is also more resilient. Such a workforce is already used to new thinking, approaches, and working styles, which makes them less disrupted by external forces. A diverse workforce is better geared toward futuristic problem-solving.
Broader appeal: By incorporating diverse cultural perspectives, companies improve their ability to connect with a broader range of customers and markets.
Despite its benefits, culture add isn’t perfect either.
Drawbacks of culture add
Potential for conflict: Diversity of opinion and work styles can lead to miscommunication, disagreements, and conflict.
Longer onboarding: It may take longer for employees who don’t naturally align with the existing culture to integrate fully into the team.
Disruption: Introducing new ideas and values might challenge established company norms and practices, causing professional and emotional disruption.
So, let’s summarize that.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is the Difference Between Culture Add and Culture Fit?
Culture add is an improvisation of culture fit. It builds on the concepts and lessons of culture fit to create an approach more suitable to modern workplaces. Here are their key differences.
| Aspect | Culture fit | Culture add |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | To maintain and strengthen existing company culture | To evolve culture by adding fresh ideas and diversity |
| Hiring focus | On finding candidates who mirror current employees in values and work style | On finding candidates who bring characteristics that are different and complementary |
| Long-term impact | Maintains consistency and operational harmony. | Enables growth, agility, and resilience |
| Hiring risk | Unconscious bias and exclusion of candidates with unconventional profiles | Hiring diverse candidates without prepping the org for them, setting them up for failure |
| Long-term risks | May result in a homogeneous workforce | May cause disruption or face initial resistance |
Summarize this article for me pleaseCulture Fit vs. Culture Add Examples
Now that you understand culture fit and culture add in theory, let’s see what it might look like in practice with a few examples.
Tech startup
Let’s say you’re looking to hire a mid-level developer for a technology startup that values flat organizational structure, quick decision-making, ownership, and commitment.
When you’re hiring for culture fit, you might translate this into preferring male candidates, who (you think) can work long hours, join the team for regular post-work drink, and quickly prototype products at all times.
When you hire for culture add, you will look for people with experience working with cross-functional teams in low-resource environments. For instance, this could be a returning-to-work mother who has built nifty products for a non-government organization (NGO).
In both cases, the qualities required in the candidate are the same. It’s the approach to evaluating those qualities that differ. Let’s see another example.
Marketing agency
Assume you’re hiring a copywriter for your B2B marketing agency. As a small business, you might be looking for people who are high-energy, competitive, and deadline-driven.
When hiring for culture fit, you might choose young college graduates who are well versed in modern lingo and social media trends.
When hiring for culture add, you will cast a wider net. You might seek candidates with diverse writing backgrounds, like a screenwriter, novelist, or from a different industry, who demonstrate adaptability and transferable skills.
Enterprise hiring
Let’s say you’re hiring a finance leader for your enterprise, with structured processes, compliance requirements, and a demanding board of directors.
While hiring for culture fit, you will seek someone with strong financial qualifications and enterprise experience, with a hold on legal and regulatory implications in the industry. This could be a CFO from a similar enterprise or someone from Wall Street.
When hiring for culture add, you might seek out a fintech entrepreneur, even if they have failed to build their own business. This gives them a holistic outlook, clear understanding of risks, and the ability to handle diverse stakeholders.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Hire for Culture Fit vs. Culture Add
Hiring for culture fit and culture add requires completely different approaches. Below are some strategies to consider while hiring.
Hiring for culture fit
To hire someone who fits into your existing culture, you need to know what that is and how it has evolved. Begin there and document every step in the process with a human resource management tool like ClickUp.
1. Define your culture
The first step in how to hire for culture fit is defining your culture. This can include outlining mission/vision/values, studying existing employee behaviors, mapping work styles, etc. Here are some core values examples for you to get started.
Use ClickUp Whiteboards to conduct workshops with a cross-section of your employees. If you’re looking to speak to everyone, send out a survey using ClickUp Forms. This way, you can capture your findings automatically within ClickUp’s project management tool.
2. Map culture alignment
This step is where things get real. Clearly define what ‘culture fit’ means. Make a list of all beliefs and behaviors you will explore to evaluate culture alignment with the organization’s ethics. Include this list in your job description templates.
For example, if one of your values is transparency, define what it means. What should the candidate have to demonstrate their transparency? Should they appear honest? Take responsibility for their actions? Embrace failure?
This requires reflection and long-form writing. Open up ClickUp Docs and write everything down. Share it with relevant people and seek comments. Incorporate suggestions and crystallize elements of culture.
3. Create an appropriate hiring process
Build a process that checks culture fit at every stage.
Background screening: Seek job experience in organizations similar to yours in culture. For example, if you’re a startup hiring your first HR person, look for candidates experienced in scaling talent acquisition for early-stage companies.
Shortlisting: Identify candidates who can do the job well. If you’re a small organization needing everyone to be a generalist, evaluate the candidate’s entire range of skills.
Pre-tests: Within your recruitment tools, design questions that explore the way the candidate works, not just the output they produce. For example, instead of multiple choice questions, ask the candidate to map their thought process.
Interviews: Encourage conversations that explore the cultural aspects of the candidate’s professional life. Some questions to ask:
- How do you prefer to work with your team?
- How would you handle a disruptive member of your team?
- Describe your ideal work environment
- Can you give an example of when you had to adapt to a company’s culture?
- What does a successful day at work look like to you?
Use ClickUp’s Recruitment Action Plan Template to streamline this process. Aim your candidate evaluation, interview scheduling, document management, and onboarding processes toward achieving culture fit with this template.
Hiring for culture add
While the above process was pretty straightforward, hiring for culture add needs more thought and consideration. Here are steps you can take to successfully implement culture add hiring strategies in your organization.
1. Define your ideal culture
Visualize what you want your company culture to be. For instance, if you’re a traditional enterprise with structures, processes, and time-tested results, your ideal culture might be one of innovation and energy. Define that clearly.
ClickUp’s Company Culture Template helps you visualize your future-state in a way that is easy for the talent team to hire and new employees to absorb.
2. Identify gaps
Compare your current culture with your ideal state and identify gaps. Organizations seeking culture add, typically find gaps in:
- Diversity of backgrounds, experiences, or worldviews with new thought processes and ideas to challenge groupthink
- Innovation and creativity to energize existing processes
- Openness with ideas and privilege to elevate collective performance
- Conflict management with the ability to disagree but commit and move forward as a team
3. Actively seek culture add
Design end-to-end hiring processes to attract talent that creates culture add.
Resume screening: Deliberately look for candidates with unconventional backgrounds and career journeys. Implement diversity recruiting practices.
Pre-test: Prioritize behavioral skills over technical skills. Test for problem-solving, critical thinking, logical reasoning, and the ability to learn.
Interviews: Have open conversations with candidates. Be open to critical feedback from them. Embrace ideas and inputs on how they can enrich your organization. Some questions you might ask are:
- What unique experiences or skills do you bring to this company?
- Tell me about a time when you challenged an existing process at work
- How do you see yourself adapting to our company culture?
- What would you change about our current culture to make it better?
Here are more strategic interview questions to ask candidates in your hiring process.
And here is ClickUp’s Hiring Candidates Template to streamline your entire recruitment process. With this template, add all relevant information and compare candidates on a unified view. Build custom fields for parameters that are important to you. For example, capture diversity hiring data using custom fields.
So, do we hire for culture fit or culture add? The answer isn’t that simple!
Summarize this article for me pleaseStriking the Right Balance
In order to build an inclusive workplace, you need to find a perfect balance between alignment and growth. Here’s why.
Importance of balance
You need people who can work well with your current set up as well as those who evolve the culture in line with the demands of the future. To do this, you need to strike a balance between culture fit and culture add.
For example, if every employee is different in every way, you’ll be left with chaos. However, if every employee is similar to every other in every way, you have a company devoid of fresh ideas.
Alternatively, if you have some commonalities and some differences, you have an energetic potpourri of talent. This energy and vibrancy accelerates business growth.
Strategies for assessing culture fit and culture add
Whether you’re hiring for culture fit or culture add, assessing it is a big challenge. How can you tell if someone is transparent or will take ownership, or do what’s right? These are beliefs and behaviors that are difficult to accurately measure in a test.
Below are some strategies that will improve the likelihood of success in assessing culture fit and culture add. For better efficiency, organize your strategies with ClickUp’s Recruitment Strategy Document Template. Use it to streamline recruitment and onboarding.
Design behavioral interviews: During the interview, have meaningful conversations about the candidate’s beliefs and behaviors. Seek examples of how they behaved in various situations in the past.
Create diverse interview panels: Get diverse groups of people and hiring managers to meet prospective employees to evaluate the commonalities and differences more effectively.
Try personality tests: Consider using personality or cultural assessments to evaluate how the candidate’s values align with or add to the company culture. Use a bias-free scale to execute these tests.
Focus on impact: While past experiences and behaviors are important, explore what plans and ideas the candidate has for the future.
Onboard right: Let’s see how.
Onboarding and integration into the team
Now that you’ve hired the right person, don’t stop there. Use the onboarding experience to create the culture fit or culture add that you seek from your team.
Set expectations: Clearly outline the company’s expectations during the onboarding process. Explain the company culture, work style, and what success looks like.
Introduce every stakeholder: Provide opportunities for new employees to learn about the business and its people. ClickUp’s Meet the Team Template is a great way to consolidate information about all the key people which new team members can review anytime.
Immerse culturally: Get new hires to meet key team members, experience different departments, and participate in cultural or team-building activities as part of onboarding.
Communicate openly: Foster an environment of open communication. Demonstrate that you are willing to listen to feedback without a negative response. Encourage new employees to share their ideas and ask questions.
Create safe spaces: When you hire for diversity, you are bringing different kinds of people into the same physical and virtual space. Make it safe. For instance, here’s how to onboard neurodiverse new hires.
Create feedback loops: Check in regularly with new hires. Gather feedback on their experience and fill in the gaps. Use it to optimize future hiring and onboarding programs.
Mentorship: Pair new employees with mentors who can guide them through the company’s cultural and operational aspects.
Training: Schedule Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive (DEI) training programs to help new employees understand your policies and practices.
Try the ClickUp Employee Onboarding Template to organize this in a jiffy!
Summarize this article for me pleaseTransform Your Recruitment Culture with ClickUp
This is the understanding that led to the emergence of culture add as a concept. Whichever model you choose, it is widely accepted that culture is an important aspect of hiring. Evaluating, testing, hiring, and onboarding talent that can integrate with your company culture can be a challenge.
That’s when ClickUp jumps in. With customizable features, collaborative spaces, and pre-designed templates, ClickUp offers the structure you need to manage talent acquisition and DEI goals for work. Take it for a spin. Try ClickUp today for free.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
