15 Best Culture Fit Interview Questions

Hiring new employees is such a hopeful time — you hope they’ll apply for your open role, accept your offer, and jump right into feeling like part of the team. And of course, you hope they’ll stay with your company and contribute their best for years to come. But hope doesn’t get you the results you want, and traditional hiring processes might not either. 

This is where cultural fit comes in — it’s all about ensuring that candidates will thrive in your company’s work environment, with their team members and managers, and be happy and satisfied in your company culture. 

Finding the right culture fit should be a part of your interview process so you’re relying on data and evidence instead of just hope and intuition. These 15 culture interview questions will enable you to hire people who are the perfect fit for your company. 

‍

How to Hire for Culture Fit 

But before you can focus on hiring for cultural fit, first you need to understand exactly what your existing company culture is. (This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many HR teams skip this step!) Measuring your organizational culture is a good place to start. 

Once you know what your organization’s culture currently is, you can better aim to hire people who will work well within that culture. If your culture is currently a work in progress, you can also look to hire people who will move you closer to that aspirational state (just be sure you’re making the other needed changes too, and not relying on one new person to change your entire culture overnight). 

What does hiring for good cultural fit look like in action? Consider a fast-growing new startup company that is hiring for a new VP of sales, and is deciding between two top candidates. The first one has 20 years of sales leadership experience in big enterprises, likes clear lines of responsibilities and hierarchies, and is well-versed in the old school sales methodologies and playbooks. The second one has less than a decade of sales leadership experience, but they’re more flexible and adaptive in their approach, on top of the newest sales playbooks that work in the digital age, and are less hierarchical. 

Just looking at years of work experience in this case would lead to hiring a poor cultural fit in the first candidate, while the second candidate has less experience but is more aligned with the ethos of a startup culture and their company values. 

The Best Cultural Fit Interview Questions 

But what, exactly, should you be asking candidates in job interviews to determine if they’re aligned with your workplace culture? These culture fit questions are the best route — use one or many of them in your next interview process. 

There are no wrong answers for questions like these: just ones that help you measure your company’s culture against a candidate’s values and preferences. 

‍

1. Describe the type of work environment where you feel the most inspired and productive.

Knowing a candidate’s ideal work environment can help your hiring team figure out if they’ll thrive in your company. For example, if they prefer a quiet environment with few interruptions and your company’s office is high-energy and collaborative, it’s likely not going to work out well if they’re hired. 

‍

2. Do you prefer working alone or in a team most of the time? Why? 

The same applies to asking about how the candidate prefers to work with people: if they’re super extroverted and love projects that require a lot of teamwork, they won’t be a good fit for a company or department where team members are quiet and work mostly alone. 

‍

3. What do you hope to achieve during your first six months here?

This question will help you analyze what each candidate sees as an achievement, and what they’re hoping to feel in their first few months as a new hire. What are their priorities and ambitions, and how do those align with the company and the role they’re applying to join?  

‍

4. How much autonomy do you prefer?

Asking about a candidate’s preferred management style and desire for autonomy can illuminate critical components of their cultural fit with your organization. If your company is full of highly self-motivated people who work in a high-autonomy culture, a candidate who needs a more hands-on management style is likely to struggle and feel left behind. 

‍

5. What are you most proud of achieving at work in your previous roles?

Inquiring into how a candidate sees their past achievements can give you a good idea of what they hope to accomplish in the future. If they talk a lot about past promotions and gaining responsibility, you’ll know that career development is very important to them, while if they’re focused on building communities or innovation, that’s useful information too. 

‍

6. If you join us, where do you see yourself one year from now? And in five years? What is your plan to get there?

How does each candidate see themselves fitting into and thriving in your organization? Does that vision align with what you expect from the person in the role, and the hiring manager’s vision for the role too? 

7. Can you provide a few examples of stressful work situations you’ve experienced and how you coped with these situations?

Every workplace has its own stressors, so you should evaluate candidates to see if they are equipped to handle the unique stresses in your organization. For example, if the new hire will need to work with tight deadlines and time pressures often, are they prepared to handle that? 

‍

8. Can you describe a mistake you made at work and what you learned from it?

Everyone makes mistakes, so knowing how each candidate looks back at theirs and learns lessons from them is important. Are they paralyzed by failure, or have trouble admitting they’ve even made mistakes? That’s not going to be a good fit in a culture that prizes innovation and adaptability. 

‍

9. What are your top three personality traits that you’re most proud of?

Some interviewers will ask candidates for their top strength, but asking for three personality traits and why they’re proud of them will give you a better-rounded picture of this person you’re considering hiring. 

‍

10. Why are you leaving your current role? Why do you think our company would be a better fit?

Your potential employee has almost certainly held a job before, so what made them leave it? Was it a mismatch in work styles, a toxic work culture, or something else? You want to know what makes them so unhappy they’d want to leave a job, and what draws them to a new place, so you can check if your company will be a better fit for them.  

‍

11. Have you ever found a company policy inefficient or unfair? What was the policy and why?

Knowing what candidates see as bad or unfair work policies can help you surface any potential dealbreakers for both sides up front. For example, if a strict dress code drives them crazy and your company has one, you can immediately identify a poor fit for everyone. 

‍

12. How would you approach changing an attitude of “this is the way it’s always been done” in the workplace, if you thought there was a better way?  

This question will tell you a lot about how a candidate approaches bureaucracy, hierarchy, innovation, and existing attitudes. If you’re looking for new hires who are comfortable overhauling processes and pushing the envelope, this is especially critical to ask. 

13. Is there a specific part of our organization’s culture, mission, or values that you find compelling?

This question serves a few purposes — first, it will show you if they’ve done their research on your company before their interview so they can articulate at least a few of your core values. (Be sure to make this an open-ended question instead of listing your mission and values first to get that intel!) Plus, you’ll get more direct intel on what they’ve picked up about your mission and culture and how it aligns with their own personal values. 

‍

14. Have you taken any professional risks, big or small? Can you give an example?

Both risk takers and rule followers play important roles in organizations, but which one fits your culture better? Asking this question can help you determine what kinds of risks you want new employees to take (and which you want them to avoid) and hiring accordingly. 

‍

15. What does a good work-life balance look like to you?

While every company wants employees with a strong work ethic, there’s definitely a different approach between companies when it comes to work-life balance. If your interviewee likes to work hard until 5 pm on the dot when they sign off, and your role or company requires more flexibility, that’s good to know up front (this probably isn’t their dream job, and they might be a retention risk). 

‍

Using Culture Fit Questions for Hiring 

These questions by themselves aren’t a magic bullet to perfect your company culture, but they can go a long way toward ensuring that your new hires will flourish at your company instead of foundering. Be sure to train your hiring managers on how to use these questions too, and make them a standardized part of your hiring process to make it even more successful. Happy hiring!