Rethinking Cultural Fit in Advancement Recruitment
If you’ve been involved in hiring, chances are you’ve heard a colleague use the term “fit” or “cultural fit” when evaluating a candidate. The intention behind such an assessment is typically to mitigate risk—to the employer and to the candidate—but it is virtually impossible to apply such an assessment in any objective way.
Over the last decade, Aspen Leadership Group has worked with more than 1,000 nonprofits and thousands of candidates across all sectors and regions, with nearly 60% focused on higher education. Based on our experience with these clients and candidates, we recognize the persistence of “cultural fit” as a concept informing hiring practices.
Relatedly, we also recognize a need to expand the national conversation sparked in 2020, centered primarily on race, to encompass various dimensions of diversity, access, equity, inclusion and belonging, including age, ability, class, and region.
We acknowledge that these conversations have always been ongoing, primarily led by those most impacted. With our session, we seek to amplify and surface some of these conversations.
We will provide a short presentation on “cultural fit” and the obstacles it presents towards achieving DEIB in hiring and retention. We will then explore a real-world informed scenario of “fit” in a hiring context to apply insights from the presentation and our own lived experiences. A distinguished panel of higher education philanthropy leaders will join us to discuss their strategies and tactics to address this persistent challenge.
We aim to empower participants to rethink “cultural fit” and actively integrate the actionable insights gained from this session into their hiring and retention practices. By doing so, we may foster a more diverse, inclusive, accessible, and equitable advancement landscape in which everyone feels they belong.