Ejercicio 1 — Text A: Firms Hire for “Cultural Fit”
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Firms Hire for “Cultural Fit”
Job rejections are like break ups – they are never fun, but some are worse than others. ‘We were impressed by your resume, but you’re not a cultural fit’ is the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ of job rejections. It is vague, confusing and almost always means there was something about you personally they didn’t like, but didn’t want to say out loud. Sandra Okerulu experienced this first-hand earlier this year. She applied for a role at a New York-based company and had an interview which went “perfectly”, she says. The company told her that her experience was what they were looking for, and she’d get an email about a second interview shortly. But she heard nothing for days. “Then I got an email saying I wasn’t a good fit, so they went with somebody else,” she says.
Of course, candidates understand job interviews are about more than checking qualifications. They’re also compatibility assessments – if your working style and behaviours mean you’ll function well within an organisation. The problem is that, too often, these assessments are subjective. That can mean candidates who look, act or sound different to recruiters are at an immediate disadvantage. Being dismissed for ‘cultural fit’ can leave demoralised candidates struggling to decipher what they did wrong. It can also leave certain workers unable to access particular roles or sectors.
Although many recruiters only hire candidates they think will fit with the company culture, research shows it’s actually in companies’ interests to stop doing this if they want to build better teams. In fact, there’s a significant disadvantage for companies who rely on cultural fit: they can end up very homogenous, so diversity is actually better for business.
Adapted from “What Does Being a ‘Cultural Fit’ Actually Mean?” BBC Worklife, October 20, 2021. <https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211015-what-does-being-a-cultural-fit-actually-mean>