What is the path of least resistance for a corporate hiring panel? Picking the candidate who seems most likely to ‘fit in’ with the company culture.
This is both a no-brainer and a safe thing to do; nobody gets fired for hiring somebody who is just like the majority of your people. But it’s also a no-brainer in the sense that a panel which recruits solely for culture isn’t really using its brains.
Recruiting for culture is often the accidental result of unconscious bias, but can also be down to conscious bias across the organisation. At Indigogold we have a number of clients with a strong cultural identity that translates into a specific ‘type’. These strong cultural identities are often found in businesses with strong brands, but there is a downside to always recruiting to this type.
What happens when the world changes or when the business is meeting different challenges? For example, Apple has experienced almost a decade of unprecedented growth as its pioneering iPhone captured and held the premium smartphone category – but rival models now compete hard with the iPhone on both style and desirability, and outstrip it in terms of innovation. So, as its market share shrinks in key territories like China, does Apple still need to recruit the same ‘type’ as it did during its days of effortless dominance? Or should the changed business reality now require a different recruitment strategy?
Every major hire by any organisation is an opportunity to think long and hard about whether somebody different from the norm might be exactly what the organisation needs, either in this particular post or at this particular time. Diversity isn’t just about people’s race, gender and even class; critically, it’s about the way people think, and their personalities. In the long run, repeatedly hiring people with the same outlooks will lead to your organisation turning into a colony of drones, prone to groupthink and devoid of fresh thoughts or insights.
When should you think about countercultural hiring?
Sometimes the need is obvious, especially where a business is expanding into new areas or changing direction. For example, a telesales call centre which recruits only aggressive and driven salespeople will need to hire a new generation of softer, patient and more sympathetic people if it decides to develop an outsourced customer support service. A brash sales beast in pointy shoes is highly unlikely to be capable of giving soothing reassurance to a querulous old lady whose Hoover has just given up the ghost.
Other countercultural hires may be needed to deal with a specific business problem. Think of a company where the cultural emphasis is on getting along with other people and making decisions collaboratively, relying on ad hoc co-operation rather than defined command and control structures. Such a company, filled with empathetic, concerned and sensitive people, might well find that its product development team is regularly beaten to market by rivals; discussions about new products simply take too long, involve too many stakeholders, and create too many compromises as everybody tries to accommodate everybody else’s views.
This company might decide to hire counterculturally by recruiting a confident product development leader who is oriented towards getting results, creating a process that delivers faster decisions and more distinctive products.
What are the pitfalls of countercultural hiring?
The most common danger is that the new people become frustrated by constant rebuffs delivered by the host culture (‘we don’t do things that way here’), and end up quitting. If the countercultural hire is in authority, they may find their subordinates quietly and stubbornly undermining their decisions and projects, as the culture’s immune system seeks to neutralise and eject the intruder.
Countercultural hiring decisions need to be made on the basis of hard data, and not on gut instinct; you need to know exactly why you are recruiting against the prevailing culture (or, for that matter, recruiting to the culture).
You need to prepare both the candidates and their teams for the stresses and strains that counterculturalism will inevitably create until the organisation adapts to the new way of working and accepts the new hires. Any decision to change the entire culture of the organisation requires top-down approval, with successive layers of leadership being convinced of the need for the change, and in turn spread buy-in to their subordinates.
If all this sounds like hard work, that’s because it really is. But if you went into business for a quiet life, then you’re in the wrong job.
This company might decide to hire counterculturally by recruiting a confident product development leader who is oriented towards getting results, creating a process that delivers faster decisions and more distinctive products.
What are the pitfalls of countercultural hiring?
The most common danger is that the new people become frustrated by constant rebuffs delivered by the host culture (‘we don’t do things that way here’), and end up quitting. If the countercultural hire is in authority, they may find their subordinates quietly and stubbornly undermining their decisions and projects, as the culture’s immune system seeks to neutralise and eject the intruder.
Countercultural hiring decisions need to be made on the basis of hard data, and not on gut instinct; you need to know exactly why you are recruiting against the prevailing culture (or, for that matter, recruiting to the culture).
You need to prepare both the candidates and their teams for the stresses and strains that counterculturalism will inevitably create until the organisation adapts to the new way of working and accepts the new hires. Any decision to change the entire culture of the organisation requires top-down approval, with successive layers of leadership being convinced of the need for the change, and in turn spread buy-in to their subordinates.
If all this sounds like hard work, that’s because it really is. But if you went into business for a quiet life, then you’re in the wrong job.