Missing puzzle piece

Someone Might Just be a bad Culture Fit, Too.

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last week, I shared an article and some of my own experiences around “culture fit” being a code for discrimination. We all know that is all too common, and an excuse for organizations to continue to hire “people like us”.

I saw another article over the weekend that reminded us that while that is common, there are some cases where someone is a bad cultural fit and there’s no discrimination involved.

Fired For Not Being a Culture Fit: What To Do

More importantly, the article also contains some advice on how to handle this in future interviews. That could be helpful.

So, yes, employers often use cultural fit as an excuse to not be very diverse in their hiring practices. Sometimes, however, things just aren’t a good fit. I’ve left jobs and turned down interviews for jobs, that weren’t good fits for me. Not jobs I couldn’t do. Jobs I was actually quite good at, but what I wanted for my lifestyle wasn’t a good fit. Traveling all the time? Enjoyed it for a few years, but other factors in my life made it a bad fit. Working in an office all day, every day? Again, enjoyed parts of that, but what I wanted from my life wasn’t compatible. I wasn’t a good fit any longer, so I made the choice to change jobs. Employers can make those choices as well.

As I said last week, hiring a good cultural fit gets us someone who can slide right into our team and contribute. As long as we aren’t using it as an excuse to only hire certain kinds of people, that’s OK.

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