I had two great candidates. One aced the technical side, the other nailed the cultural fit.
I went with the culture fit… now the technical gaps are starting to show. How do you balance skills vs. fit when making a decision?

1: if you hire for the culture fit, then provide proper training for the technical (if the learning curve is not too steep).

2: if the technical learning curve is too steep, then definitely hire the technical ones and just have to realize people come to work, and they are not your family. As long as they get the job done, who cares about culture fit (really is just your subjective view on whether you like them or not).

I go with the culture fit every time. Then I set up a learning program to build the technical skills.

oh that is tricky, because I think I would have gone with the cultural fit as well. Maybe you can get your new hire some training? Look into online courses for them maybe that will help

Damn so the skills guy ain't ish?? Wow

You can teach skills. Unfortunately you can’t teach people to be pleasant without years of therapy. That would do a number on insurance premiums

Typically I would wait until I can find a candidate that has both. But if it’s an entry-level position, that means the company has the bandwidth to train someone from the bottom up so in that case I would go for the cultural fit and find someone who’s early in their career because those people are receptive to learning new things and are easy to train for the most part. But if you’re looking for a mid-level or expert career level, then picking someone who is only a good technical fit could have negative long-term effects if they don’t mesh well with the team and overall company culture. So for those type of positions, I would definitely wait until I found a candidate who has both.

Yeah, this one is tough. A strong cultural fit is very important to me, but technical expertise is equally critical when the role requires it. Skills can often be taught, but attitude and adaptability are much harder to shift. Since gaps are showing, I’d prioritize helping this employee pursue training to close them as quickly as possible. I’m sure this experience is already offering valuable insights, and next time, you’ll likely be looking for candidates with a better balance of both sides.

I think the decision would depend upon the circumstances and role I was hiring for. I just filled a position I’ve had open since November 2024, because I needed a senior person with strong technical expertise, business knowledge, soft skills, and mentality (same heart, diverse mind), and I chose to wait for the four even though I interviewed several candidates who were strong in two or three of the four. And I’m glad I did! The person I found has all four, started last week, and is already adding a lot to my team.

But if I were hiring entry level I’d absolutely look for technical curiosity and a good mentality fit versus just the skills I wanted.

And if I were hiring for a position where I needed an expert yesterday, I’d hope for a fit in all counts but likely favor the technical expertise as long as the mentality was acceptable even if not perfect. Acceptable would mean no disqualifiers (arrogance, refusal to learn from others, questionable ethics, or a strongly negative/pessimistic attitude) because I’ve worked hard to build a team that relies on each other’s unique knowledge, experience, background, and areas of passion and I’m not willing to jeopardize that.

I’ve only had to fire one person I hired, and it was because they weren’t able to mesh with the rest of the team. I didn’t like it. But I did learn a lot from it about what it takes to build a high performing team of collaborators.

this is tough but I typically go with culture fit unless the role is extremely technical and doesn't involve much cross functional work