286. The 'Cockroaches of HR', interview hacks and return-to-office Dilemmas. PLUS! Should you hire for culture fit?

0:01Nick Corcodilos:Coming up this week in work. Are exit interviews actually useless? One headhunter is calling them the cockroaches of the employment world. Strong. So if you want to know why people really left, when should you be asking them? Yeah, and we all know the job market is tough right now. But what if there was an app that you were not only able to practice your interview technique, but also got real-time feedback on how you could do better? Oh, and what if it was filled with videos all designed to help you land your dream job? Well, I think I might have found it more shortly. And in truth or lie, should you hire for CultureFit?

0:35Around 80 % of employers say it's a top priority when choosing candidates. Does it actually predict whether someone will be good at the job? I've read the research and I've got a verdict.

0:47Nick Corcodilos:And of course, in the workplace surgery, we've got three more questions. One of them is about enforcing a policy you don't believe in when you're caught in the middle of it. One listener is struggling with a five-day return to office mandate and knows their team will too. This is True Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Al. I'm a business owner and I'm here to ask you the questions you might be afraid to. My name is Leanne. I'm a charter occupational psychologist and I'm here to answer them.

1:15And together, we help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.

1:20Nick Corcodilos:Right back after a very quick word from our sponsors. HubSpot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers. And here's a perfect example. Leigh, your turn. Morehouse College needed to reach new students with fresh, engaging content. But with a massive 900-page website, even the tiniest updates took 30 minutes to publish. Breeze, which is HubSpot's collection of AI tools, helped them write and optimize their content in just a fraction of the time. The results? 30 % more page views, and visitors now spend 27 % more time on their site. If you're ready for impossible growth like this, visit HubSpot.com.

2:04Nick Corcodilos:hello hello welcome back welcome back lee has it been a good week what can we say it's only tuesday and it's already been a really bad week yeah well it will not we'll we'll not get too much into it because um yeah there's the i think our friends will know and i know jeremy will know because i told him i had to move his call today but yes so um in short in a few weeks time we might be coming to you from a different country who knows who knows here we go again anyway here i go again almost i don't know the second line to that if i did i'd try and do something clever around residency but let's let's just say that if you do want to live in a particular balkan country then it's never simple it's never simple no sir what is simple though is you leanne you're a very simple I'm a very simple person with very simple needs.

2:57Nick Corcodilos:Well, I think one of your needs is to learn what's going on in the world of work. Is that the weakest, worst segue I've ever done? No, I like it. Yeah, you like it? I like it. I think we can do that through the News Roundup. So why don't you do my favourite and do that thing more? Yes. All right. I'll press that button. Okay, Lee. By the way, I told you, haven't I? I found a new thing on my disco box on my roadcaster. Yeah. Have you changed the music for the News Roundup? No, no. But at some point, listener, in the next few weeks, I'm going to surprise you with a cool new button that is a cool new thing.

3:26Nick Corcodilos:Leigh, what have you seen this week, my love? Our exit interviews are cockroaches of the employment world. I mean, that's pretty strong. It is pretty strong. It is. This was, yeah, this guy, a headhunter called Nicholas... Oh, man, I should have practiced this. Nicholas Korkadilos. Can I have a guess at where his name's from? Yeah. i would guess he's greek oh maybe yeah yeah maybe maybe well if this was in ink i think i didn't actually write that down i will leave a link but i think it was in ink and yeah nick was saying that he thinks exit interviews and the whole idea of them are the cockroaches of the unemployment world he reckons nobody really knows why they exist no one can quite justified them and yet they never really seem to go away i mean in theory exit interviews should give companies useful data shouldn't they it makes sense why you're so this is what is an exit interview i was just about to say just in case someone's like exit interview what does it mean so exit interview is when an employee has resigned from the company and on their last day or a few days before they leave you sit them down and basically try and find out why try and get some feedback in terms of the organization so yeah basically why they're leaving maybe what's broken what needs what needs fixing and and i think the telling the truth in a situation like that is quite difficult isn't it because at that moment those employees still need references they don't want to burn any bridges so instead of kind of going oh my manager's an absolute nightmare actually they're the reason i'm leaving you know they're probably just more likely to give safer generic answers.

5:08I do run exit interviews with employees of my clients who leave on the occasion they do because my clients enjoy very high levels of retention. And even as a third party speaking to them, you know, you really need to dig around to find out something useful. And even then, say you did find a name. Say you did find out, what are you going to do with that? Because you need to hold confidentiality for that person. So if you're then going to the person that is the reason they're leaving then that breaks it so it's all just a bit complicated anyway so nick had an idea right instead of asking them on their way out the organization doing that interview then what if you reach out to them directly six months later and ask them to go for lunch oh that's an idea so it's not a formal interview it's more of a conversation six months on his thought is the time will change dynamic thoughts yeah i totally agree because also and

6:07Nick Corcodilos:the other thing i suppose is that in an exit interview if it's like three or four days before you leave you're already in the next job and you don't really want to be thinking about this job because you've already like mentally moved on so asking someone to go okay how can we make it better if it's if it's one of those situations where someone is leaving because they hate a manager or um they just don't like the organization what like you said you're not going to get honest answers and even if you did they're not going to be particularly helpful because this one person has decided this is not for them the data doesn't seem you know it's not a longitudinal study it's not it's not got lots and lots of data points it's got one person's opinion who's probably a little bit knocked off with you yeah i should say they've already they've already psychologically moved on haven't they so what's in it for them to really sit down and give you brutal feedback in that moment but six months later maybe maybe they will and this is what what nick nick's theory is he reckons that a relaxed conversation over lunch will produce very different answers to a formal meeting in HR room and the advice is to treat it as a genuine conversation.

7:08He also thinks the second benefit is that by that stage the former employee has seen another organization so they can compare. So sometimes they'll confirm your issues, sometimes they'll realize that things weren't actually as bad as they thought. So it kind of gives the feedback some more context. that makes sense yeah i think it's quite i think it's a good idea i have questions around how you can reach out to somebody who's no longer in your organization i i think well maybe whether you ask permission of that beforehand if that's going to be your

7:40Nick Corcodilos:i don't see that being a problem i mean there's there is a there's a tiny little platform it's infancy it's called linkedin yeah i know but it's like i think you're going to have much more chance of somebody participating that if you ask them as they laugh look would you mind if we got in touch in six months time and and see what ask some questions about your experience or maybe just like grab a hot dog grab a hot dog where are you in new york city are you in suits is this harvey spectra's left for someone else five guys or something i'm all more you can get hot dogs in the uk what the hell's five guys the burger place why is it called five guys oh god you're so old what's wrong with donald's i bring back wimpy that's what i say i loved wimpy anyway uh yeah I think just you could just solve that really simply, I think, just by saying, is it OK if we keep in touch?

8:26Nick Corcodilos:Who's going to say no to that? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And do we send your email or should we connect on LinkedIn? Yeah, cool. OK, that'd be great. By the way, this is our new business is what we're going to do. We are going to be the exit interview guys. We're going to get in touch with Nick. We'll pay him a commission for coming up with the idea. And we just go for lunch every day. And the company will pay for our lunch. And we just ask, we just do the exit interviews. Someone would be like, unload. Who's the biggest arsehole in the organisation? Tell us everything. Tell us all. Spill the tea.

8:58Nick Corcodilos:Oh, and you can make it fun because you can have all the managers in the organisation like a Guess Who board. You can say like, does she have curly hair? Brilliant. That would be quite funny. Guess Who needs to be something to do with the organisation. Work edition. Yeah, you need a work edition of Guess Who. Yes, that would be brilliant. I worked in this one company where everybody looked really strange and it genuinely looked like, when you looked out, it was a guess who board because it's like people with big long heads and someone with a big beard down to their knees and stuff. And then there was a mustache.

9:30Yeah. Who's the dude that looked like an egg?

9:34Nick Corcodilos:Oh, Bernard. You think the dude with a ginger beard? No, Bernard had a, it begins with E, Bernard had a hat. This might have been Eric. Eric looked like an egg, I believe. And you always wished, you always hoped that the other person pulled out a woman yes because like all inequality there was only like four women in guess who underrepresentation actually helped exactly exactly anyway moving on lee let's what have you seen love okay so i want to talk a little bit about something i teased in the intro um there's a platform called how to job uh the name how to job and the job has now seemed to become like a verb.

10:12Nick Corcodilos:We job. I job, you job, he jobs, she jobs. Look at me conjugating the word, the fictional verb job. Do it in Spanish. Soy. Soy. What's job in Spanish? You should know that. Oh, travel. I'm thinking of work. Yeah. Travallo is work. What is it? Well, while Leanne's googling that, I will tell you. So basically, it's called How To Job and it's been introduced by a guy called Milo Seville. He, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm saying that name, that surname wrong. Basically, he has got 15 years in HR and talent, and he knows exactly what he's doing. He looked at the job market and was like, it is a bit, this is not his word, these are my words, it's a bit shit at the moment.

10:54Nick Corcodilos:And so he said, right, let's just do something really simple. Let's stop guessing what employers actually want and actually help or coach people through the entire process. So he does things like CV overhauls, LinkedIn optimization, personalized outreach strategy. This is what's really interesting. When you log into How to Job, it's like Netflix. It's got like one big video at the front playing and you can unmute it. And then you can just scroll through like shelves of other videos. And he's got loads of techniques. So it'll be, I can't remember, he's got the four horsemen of something, I think.

11:22Nick Corcodilos:I can't remember, I should have written this down. The apocalypse. No, but it's like four horsemen of the career eclipse or something. Basically, he's got loads of different cool ways of getting a job. So he talks about rather than just applying for a job, you go and find the chief executive officer or the chief operations officer and you make friends with them. you take them out for lunch and you, it doesn't really say that, but it's that sort of like really cool things. There are loads and loads of brilliant success stories on there as well. One student apparently got five offers in just over a month and another landed a job at the London Stock Exchange.

11:51Nick Corcodilos:Very, very fancy. Nice. Now, if it was just that, you'd be like, well, that's pretty cool. Yeah. But there's also something called interviewly. Now, what I don't know is whether that's in, whether that's like an extra payment for it or not. It's called interviewly or it's called interviewly. Oh, I never thought. it's called interview lee lee yes interview lee um and basically what it'll do is you open it up it says right what job position are you going for what what company are you going for yeah and then it will create this sort of simulated job job application process um you can record into it your response it'll say ask your question you record your response you get up to three attempts to record your response you can listen back choose a favorite one submit it you go through and these questions aren't just like tell us about your life you know these are genuine questions that will probably be asked in that sort of interview how do they know how does he know how does he know i don't know because he's got 15 years and talent and he's a he's a clever he's a he's a clever fella uh so anyway uh so the point is at the end of the cookbook clever cookbook side note and i had this thing about three weeks ago i think towards the end of the week we start to run out of things to talk about so it all gets a bit unhinged we were talking about how like what if like every the way you describe somebody had to be bird related yep so you pesky little partridge oh you dirty little duck dirty duck was one of the good ones what was the other one grumpy goose grumpy goose was a great one yeah a curious kookaburra is that what i just said yeah i think so we did we did we had one for starling but or swallow but that was probably that's probably a maybe not maybe maybe not go for that one can i get back to yes please to how to job uh anyway so you've so you've done your little mock interview um and at the end it'll come back and say right you answered this pretty well this wasn't so good here's some tips for it thought really really cool anyway lee thoughts yeah nice i think anything that helps people get more comfortable talking about themselves and answering questions i think there's lots of people who who yeah will read through their notes and maybe even write out an answer to a question but to actually speak it out loud and feel comfortable with it is is really useful useful practice i think it also sounds as though as though yeah it's very much helping you understand recruitment processes what they look like what competencies they might be questioning love the use of of ai i'm guessing it uses ai if it's yeah i guess what doesn't these days exactly yeah no i like it sounded i think it sounds very very cool i'd like to i'd like to poke around yeah yeah clever so so milo you're a clever little cuckoo.

14:26Nick Corcodilos:That's what you are. Cuckoo borough. No, I prefer cuckoo. Cuckoo. No, it's indigenous to the UK. Creative cuckoo. Yeah, creative little cuckoo. Yeah, so, how-to job. Is it indigenous to the UK? Cuckoo? Yeah. Well, isn't it weird with a cuckoo? They're not really indigenous, even though they are indigenous, because they basically go, well, I'm going to live here now. So, a cuckoo will knock something out of a nest, won't it? So, basically, a cuckoo is probably more like a digital nomad of the bird world where it'll go, this is where I'm staying now, but a bully digital nomad. Oh, we don't like police.

14:56Nick Corcodilos:No, and in fact, to be fair, in history, there's quite a lot of, we're not going to go into it, but there's quite a lot of countries where we've gone, oh, we might just cuckoo our way into the next country, like in 1939. So maybe we just move away from that subject entirely. Oh, we didn't. The UK is worse for cuckooing. Not during the Second World War. No, but every other, during the last 2000, it's probably not a country on earth. We've not just rucked up and gone, hey guys, like what you've done here. Do you have a flag? I like what you've done here, but do you know what would make it even better?

15:30Nick Corcodilos:Is if we ran this shit. That's how we're going to do it. Please nobody ever take that quote from Al out of context because we will never be able to live in another country other than the UK ever again. We wouldn't be able to live in the UK. We barred. No, no, no. We wouldn't. No, the UK is a strange place right now. It'd be fine. Anyway, Lee, what else have you seen? I am wondering, Al, whether older workers are being overlooked. Right. How about, you know, it would be really funny if you said, I wonder if shorter workers are being overlooked. Okay. Older workers are being overlooked. It's just ageism, pure and simple.

16:08Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And it's extreme. Yes. I also think, I hear a lot of people talking about, oh, you know, there's going to be six generations in the workplace, like it's something to manage and not like it's something that could be useful or could be leveraged necessarily. Luckily, there are some other psychologists did think that maybe this is a better question to ask if it could be useful. I saw this in the dupe.

16:30Nick Corcodilos:Do you remember what the dupe is? Journal of Organisational Psychology? Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology. The dupe. I'm sure there's a perfume called dupe or something. Yeah, there is. It's aftershave, isn't it? Anyway, so what they did, they wanted to look at if there was any actual Bennett for both parties when older and younger employees worked together. So to test this, they did two experiments. First, they paired up 142 older and younger employees and looked at how they interacted, how much they shared knowledge, and how employable older workers felt. Then they followed up with a larger survey of 385 older workers across different industries to see the same pattern held over time.

17:16Very classic methodology, this.

17:18Nick Corcodilos:Yes. I feel like I'm aware of methodologies after you explain them. What they found is that the more contact there was between generations, honestly, I've had a really bad week. I think that's the least of your problems, whether it's a was or were. Yeah. The more contact there was between generations, the more employable older workers felt. And not just in terms of confidence, but things like saying they felt more relevant, they felt more adaptable, they felt more capable in their role and it wasn't just about working together it's what actually happened when people interact so it's they need to kind of they can't just sit next to each other do you know what i mean they need to be having some kind of interaction because you can't just say we're going to have a team with a boomer an ex a millennial and a gen z and they shall create diversity in its nature they have to actually interact so you might have to want to encourage some of that interaction at times because that's where it's valuable apparently the environment matters as well so the study talked about something called intergenerational climate which is basically whether your workplace feels open across age groups or whether there is a bit of a divide so in places where that climate is positive unsurprisingly everything works better people share more they ask more they collaborate more where it's not people hold back and older workers reported stopping asking for help oh that's a problem yeah and then younger workers reported knowledge sharing reducing and so does the sense for older workers of staying relevant so if you are leading a multi-generational team you really want to encourage this mutual collaboration and and learning because from an older workers perspective what they started to also report in the worst of scenarios where the kind of intergenerational climate was poor was that they start to feel very, very isolated.

19:19And we already know that loneliness in workplace is already a bit of a problem and has been for some while. So yeah, what do you think of that one, Al?

19:28Nick Corcodilos:Well, it makes perfect sense. And I think that, you know, if you went back 20 years, then yes, there'd be like, oh, you know, the old farts are in the corner and they're just typing, they're writing out in their double entry bookkeeping system. and then the young kids are all on the computers and stuff. I think it has changed massively now. And I think also, do you know what, weirdly? I think TikTok and Instagram has actually helped quite a lot with that because I know that there's a guy, and I'm sure, listening, you're going to know who I'm talking about and saying, ain't no way. I love that guy.

19:57Nick Corcodilos:Yeah, and he's not 40 anymore. He's probably pushing 50. But the fact is that he comes on and his story, his hook line is, you're telling me that I can do this thing really simply and I'm 40 years old and I didn't know this. So I think that there's that. There's also a lot more older people who are on TikTok who are just talking about work, talking about anything really, that just younger people are perhaps listening to and going, oh, they actually do know. They're not ancient. They do actually know a little bit of something. There's that woman who, red-haired woman from Cambridge University. I forget her name.

20:31Nick Corcodilos:You know her. You love her. I'm not saying she's by any stretch old. I don't think she's that old, is she? But she's not like 19. And she gets so many views. And I think what's really cool about that is... Hannah Fry. Hannah Fry. Oh, she's my age. There we go. A little bit older, February 1984. So she's an ancient geriatric millennial. She's 42, yeah. There you go. And I just think that then you've got someone who's maybe 15, 16 going, this is pretty cool, she's pretty cool. So I do think that social media is helping a little bit that way. But then maybe it's not always, I don't know. Did that make any sense?

21:05Yeah.

21:05Nick Corcodilos:Was that just like a real old person just going, oh, well, it's all down to social media, you know? No, I think you're right. There does seem to be a bit more respect and appreciation in pockets of the internet, isn't there? In others, I think it's also just very divisive. But yeah, I think the point is, all these generations into the workplace, it's less about kind of, I guess the assumption and the narrative we're getting is that it's going to be difficult and it's going to be hard. It's like, oh, we're going to have to manage six generations in the workplace. It's like, well, how can we get excited about this?

21:34How can we put people together in teams with certain tasks or projects where we're going to start to see these wonderful things happen, this kind of skill development for the older person and knowledge and wisdom from, you know, the younger person getting knowledge and wisdom from an older person. So I'm all for it. I like it. I will leave a link in the show notes.

21:55Nick Corcodilos:Yeah, and obviously you need an organisation where you've got psychological safety and who can feel like they can ask for help. And did we not do an article last week or week before Or something about asking for help actually makes a workplace nicer or something. Maybe I dreamt that. Talking of dreaming things, we've got a very short break. And then after that, we are talking about culture. This is our truth or lie. This is where I'm going to say, Leanne, I've heard this. Is it true? And she's going to tell us whether it's true or not. We're talking about culture fit after the break. So we'll see you in a second.

22:26Nick Corcodilos:Billion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chen Spellings, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination of business professionals. Join venture capitalist and strategist Sarah Chen Spellings as she asks the hard questions and learns through the triumphs, failures and hard lessons of the creme de la creme. So you too can make billion dollar moves in venture, in business and in life. Maybe start with episode 124 where you're going to hear how industry giants from Canva to YouTube define leadership. Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

23:00Nick Corcodilos:Welcome back. Welcome back. this is truth or lie we're probably about four months into this now and with truth or lie maybe even a bit longer i have no idea i'm really enjoying it i really really like it so and i like it because i basically go leanne um is this true and then i just go go and have a cup of tea and then you sit there and you're like make all your notes and do your research and all that clever stuff today's claim leanne is it true should you hire for culture fit now to be fair I know that just anecdotally, that is one of the most common used criteria in hiring. There are so many people I speak to who say, yeah, yeah, they weren't just just weren't quite a culture fit.

23:37Nick Corcodilos:I'm looking at the note you've given me here. It says apparently 80 percent of employers say it's a top priority when selecting candidates. The idea is really simple. Find someone whose values and ways of working match the organization and everything else should follow. Lee, though, does the evidence actually support this? should you hire for culture fit is that true or a lie i sometimes wonder i drag out the answer do you want me to just tell you the verdict now just cut to the chase do you know what yeah if you're listening listener leanne's we're gonna ask leanne to say it's truth or lie and then go and tell us the reasons why yeah tell us whether you prefer this or you prefer the suspense yeah okay so is it true or is it a lie it's a lie so you should not be hiring for culture no so should we go for normally you do the the case for hiring for culture and then you do against is that fair to do yeah yeah okay so what what's the case for hiring for culture so this is i think a lot of this stems and where it comes from right so it kind of has its roots in terms of research in the 1980s late 1980s and specifically a theory from a psychologist called jennifer chapman and she looked into a person organization fit and develop this model that was kind of picked up by tech companies like your apples your google's all that type of thing in the 90s and noughties and became really popular as a hiring strategy because it was also quite visual wasn't it culture at that point because they had these big complexes like the googleplex whatever it's called what's it called yeah i think it's called the googleplex i think so yeah oh there you go so so it became something that people could see and when you can see it and somebody cool is doing it and it sounds cool you want to do it yourself so yeah by the 2010s some studies have suggested up to 84 percent of hiring managers have used it as a key factor in selection okay huge so the idea basically is if you find somebody whose values personality and ways of working align with the organization then they'll slot in more smoothly work better with colleagues and they'll be more likely to stay but in practice it can often come down to something far more subjective and what has also been kind of reported is is the airport test when talking about culture fear you heard about this no so basically would you want to be stuck in an airport with this person if the answer is yes and they're fit if they don't then they're not oh so so this is like so instead of going we're hiring for culture um what really is people are doing going do i like this person when i spend time with them if it's a yes then go oh miraculously they seem to match with our culture if it's a no they're Like, no, they're an idiot.

26:12Nick Corcodilos:I don't want to spend any time with them. Yeah, people are unfairly associating culture fit with likability. Got it. And usually we like people who are very similar to us. Which does not make a good organisation. No, it does not. But there is actually some genuine evidence that culture fit matters. Okay. It's just about how it matters. The strongest evidence comes from a 2005 meta-analysis. What's a meta-analysis, Al? Oh, no, I knew you were going to ask me this. I think it's when there are multiple, they analyze multiple research projects and put them together as one mega research. One mega research sample.

26:49Exactly. So this meta-analysis looked at 172 studies that measured 836 relationships between culture fit and an outcome. So like job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance. what it found was that when employees feel aligned with the organization's values they are significantly more satisfied with their jobs they are more committed to the organization and they are less likely to lead to leave so in terms of culture fit it's really important for being happy at work being committed to my organization and not wanting to quit yeah the correlation was was fairly chunky so when we say correlation that's kind of the the strength and direction of relationship between two things.