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> Cuture fit is a blank check to fail a person's interview just because you didn't like them in the first 30 seconds. I hear this all the time. Yeah, that migh
by el_dev_hell 7y ago
> Cuture fit is a blank check to fail a person's interview just because you didn't like them in the first 30 seconds.
I hear this all the time. Yeah, that might be true in some cases, but it's also valid in quite a lot of instances (like the example you provided).
> it is categorically impossible to establish in a 45 minute interview whether a person is actually a "fit" or not
I've run/sat in on several trainwreck interviews over the years (for ad account manager roles and logistical analyst roles mostly). Here are a few examples of candidates that were perfect in every way until the interview based on culture fit:
* The guy that mentioned he only traveled to Thailand because ladyboys do it better.
* The guy that mentioned he wouldn't work with anyone that drank alcohol because it's "the retardant of the masses". Fair enough opinion. About 20% of our ad sales came from alcohol-related businesses. I asked if he would have a problem dealing with liquor businesses. He explained that wouldn't be a problem as long as they didn't ask if he drank.
* I was sitting in on an interview with the Marketing Director for an account management gig on a Monday morning. We asked the candidate if she did anything noteworthy over the weekend. She told us she went dancing with her friend "Molly" at a music festival and laughed.
* The analyst that mentioned he scrapes NSFW subreddits in his spare time and links throwaway accounts to main accounts based on comment history, similar subreddit crossover, posting times, and vernacular (his tool was pretty impressive -- it sent him an email whenever it had a hit with over 50% accuracy or something which he received during the interview).
- epx 7y ago1/4 is homophobic.
- leereeves 7y agoNo matter what your sexuality, it's not appropriate to bring it up in an interview. Nor in the workplace. That's how sexual harassment happens.
- damnyou 7y agoNo, we should aim for people to live their authentic lives. If people cannot live their truths then society has failed.
- el_dev_hell 7y agoNo, it's not. That comment being inappropriate had nothing to do with the candidate's sexual preference. It had to do with a candidate making an inappropriate sexual remark during an interview. If the comment was "X women do it better" it would still be inappropriate. Ironically, the HR staff member present during the interview was a gay man himself. I guess he must be homophobic in your eyes also for discarding the application?
- blattimwind 7y agoThree out of those four don't seem particularly bad.
- m0zg 7y ago+1. And the one that is bad is similar to the trainwreck I mentioned in the original post (complete lack of self-awareness). GP just underscored my point without intending to do so.
- el_dev_hell 7y ago...curiously, which three aren't particularly bad?
- blattimwind 7y agoDepends on your culture.
- p1necone 7y agoFunny - one out of four doesn't seem particularly bad to me - I wonder what the overlap is.
- vfc1 7y agoWhat's the problem with dancing with Molly?
- DoreenMichele 7y agoPresumably, the interviewers interpreted it to mean the drug. But another potential interpretation is that she's gay and laughed because she was uncomfortable with the left-handed admission to her sexual orientation. Perhaps she was testing the waters to see how people would react to news that she went dancing with a woman.* Perhaps it was a wild misunderstanding or perhaps not. I'm sure we would all rather think it's a drug policy, but the reality is that the LGBTQ crowd faces discrimination severe enough that they are at increased risk of homelessness compared to the general population. * Edit: Or perhaps she didn't really think about what she saying, then realized after the fact that she just admitted in a job interview to a same sex date, then laughed uncomfortably.
- mcv 7y agoI would not recognise this as a drug reference, but even if it is, as long as you restrict it to the weekends, I see no problem with it. Dancing with a woman does not automatically imply LGBTQ, and even if it did, seeing that as a lack of cultural fit is kinda awful; that'd be using 'cultural fit' as an excuse for discrimination.
- astura 7y ago"Molly" is another name for ecstasy/MDMA.
- vfc1 7y agoOK, I knew that there was something fishy about it. I thought initially that the poster was openly admitting to discriminate against gay people.
- perl4ever 7y agoI mean, there are people named Molly. I definitely have a lack of cultural fit with people that freak out at coincidences, because I see so many every day. Accidental double entendres are a thing that happens.
- rongenre 7y agoI don't see this as a culture issue, but really poor professionalism. These are people who don't seem to realize that work small-talk is... at work. My non-work life is by most measures pretty unusual. But my answer during the Monday standups to "what did you do on the weekend?" is.. "Oh, not much, some housecleaning and laundry".