The art of hiring for cultural fit & diversity

Hiring for both culture fit and diversity is crucial to building a resilient, innovative team. Aligning candidates with your company’s culture ensures they’ll thrive in your unique environment, while diversity brings fresh perspectives and fuels creativity. The great news is, with a structured hiring process, you can achieve both, creating a team that’s both cohesive and dynamic.

We’ve detailed 6 ways you can assess fit while ensuring diversity in your hiring process for your casual and part time workforce.

Read on 👇🏼

‍

Define your core values clearly  

Make sure your company's core values are clearly defined and consistently communicated to your team. Leading businesses ensure their teams live and breathe these values daily.

Research from Seek shows that candidates are most drawn to roles when values like honesty (46%), loyalty (33%), efficiency (25%), and dependability (25%) are prioritised. 

During interviews, take the opportunity to focus on how a candidates personal values align with your company's, rather than the shared interests or personal similarities with the hiring team. To support unbiased hiring against your values, consider using a data-driven fit score to assess alignment, rather than leaving it to your intuition.

‍
Screen for cultural add, not just fit‍

During your first interaction with a candidate, go beyond standard screening questions like eligibility to work or skills assessment. Use this opportunity to identify someone who will bring fresh perspectives to your culture.

Consider adding a question about how they might challenge current practices productively. Assess whether someone will be a 'cultural add' by listening closely to their responses on company culture and values, particularly through open-ended questions, and observing their behaviour throughout the interview.

‍

Implement personality assessments‍

‍Scientifically-backed personality assessments help minimise bias in interviews and allow for evaluating traits that predict workplace success. For instance, research highlights that stability is essential for job performance across various roles, especially those requiring frequent social interaction.

‍

Structure interviews

Ask every candidate the same set of interview questions directly linked to the role and company culture. This approach reduces bias by focusing on job-relevant performance rather than personality similarities.

Once a candidate completes their personality assessment, hiring technology can help you explore their profile results further, offering structured interview questions to help you probe areas that may indicate a potential mismatch with the role or your culture.

‍

Incorporate an on-the-job trial 

Many frontline workforces include a paid or unpaid trial shift during the interview, providing a valuable opportunity to assess technical skills and problem solving abilities. This can occur at various stages of the hiring process, such as during initial screening, interviews or an onsite trial period, ensuring you're hiring for capability, not just compatibility.

‍

Create a diverse hiring panel

Research from The Diversity Council of Australia consistently links diverse and inclusive workplaces to improved profit, performance, innovation, creativity, talent management, engagement and wellbeing.

No matter how speedy your hiring process is, involving team members from varied backgrounds in candidate assessments is essential. This helps ensure diverse perspectives of the candidate and helps reduce unconscious bias.

‍

‍