"Fitting" In

I was involved in a Recruitment & Selection training program last week and in line with my focus on group facilitation, quite a lively discussion arose regarding finding someone who would fit the job and also the organisation.

Now then shouldn’t a person who is right for the job naturally be also right for the organisation you ask?

This concept of “fit” is not new and is the main crux of the hiring process i.e. finding the right person that is right for the job but also right for the organisation.

Industrial or organizational psychologists have defined “fit” in 2 distinct ways:-

Person-Job Fit (or P-J Fit).
Person-Job Fit involves what we can refer to as the “hard” aspects about a candidate’s suitability for the tasks that are required for successful performance of a specific job.

These “hard” aspects of P-J Fit include things such as a candidate’s level of knowledge (K) and level of specific skills (S) about the specific subject matter, and could also include their cognitive abilities i.e. tests for literacy, numeracy, intelligence, verbal reasoning etc.

For example in hiring a secretary, an assessment to his/her ability to do short-hand and type at more than 45 words per minute, could be a necessary requisite.

In many cases, P-J Fit also includes “softer” aspects such as the examination of an applicant’s personality traits or work preference or attitude (A) with respect to the job requirements ie tests relating to values, relational style, leadership style etc.

This is by far the easiest part of the recruitment and selection process, evidenced by the numerous assessment tools available to “test” a candidate’s suitability.

Person-Organization Fit (or P-O Fit).
For the second type of fit known as Person-Organization Fit, it would be fair to say that it is much less common for this kind of fit to be properly measured during the hiring process using a valid assessment tool.

Instead, this type of fit is typically based on anecdotal evidence and based a lot on the “gut feel” of the Hiring Manager (HM) or Human Resource (HR), usually after a face-to-face interview.

“I have a good feeling (or vibe) from this candidate”. “I’m more comfortable with that candidate”. Do these sound familiar?

But how many times have we also found out the hard way that the new recruit is just not performing to expectations, usually not from the job competency standpoint, but from the way he/she relates to the rest of their colleagues, in terms of the values that are not in synch with the organization’s, or does not seem as motivated to succeed etc.

The simplest way to look at it is that the candidate does not seem to fit the “culture” of the organization. How oft have we heard about the famed US or Korean or SME “work-cultures”?

So it is important to not only understand what our company’s organization culture is like ie is it formal vs informal, task or people-oriented, results or process-oriented, team orientation, orientation towards learning and development etc but also how well a potential candidate can ‘fit” and eventually thrive in those sorts of environments.

So, in addition to getting the “P-J” fit right, organizations would do well to spend a bit more effort and resources to get the “P-O” fit as it would yield both tangible outcomes like reduced turnover and lower costs of hiring but also in other intangible ways like a more happy, committed and productive staff.