Is it common to have “Cultural Fit” interviews in tech companies? My friend has her 2nd round of interview with this startup tech company and apparently it focuses only on the fact that if she is a good fit for the company’s culture. She doesn’t even know the kind of questions they could ask.
Do you have an idea on what she can expect from this?

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"Cultural fit" is the new discrimination loophole and it's becoming more and more common in this brutally harsh job market. With a thousand other candidates to choose from, they're looking for anything they possibly can to disqualify you from the role. And they can pass on you for any reason: skin color, political leaning, sexual orientation, age. They'll never actually say the reason, they'll just file it under "not the right cultural fit".

They might ask some nonsense questions like "what does work/life balance mean to you" or "how do you handle a difficult coworker situation" or "what are your hobbies" or "how do you react under pressure". It's almost like a hazing opportunity for the interviewers. Interviews that aren't primarily focused on role-specific qualifications should be illegal, but they're getting away with it because they can.

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Thanks for sharing!

I can share you some past question Doc to read through if that will help

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Thanks in advance!

I think a lot of companies use their leadership principles or core values from the website as a foundation for those questions. Probably best to study up on those. A weird one I got recently was “what keeps you up at night?”

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But thanks for sharing

Culture fit interviews usually seems to be done by smaller companies with loose HR policies. When you’re in a structured organization with boundaries between professional and personal, you can work with almost anyone or HR will handle it.

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Thanks for sharing!

It's baked in to Google's interview process for all roles. Up until this experience it has always been up to the interview panel to determine if a person is a good fit through their own line of questioning amd the conversation in general without there being specific guidelines or a specific process to determine "cultural fit."

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Thanks for sharing!

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