
Ask HN: Is this extreme cultural fit selection? - culturalfitt
I have interviewed at two dozen companies for a senior developer position and just had a weird experience at an Austrian company.<p>Two HR reps spent the first 12min talking about why they liked working there, their hobbies, friend and family, sports, etc, before I had a chance to introduce myself.<p>When I started talking, they didn&#x27;t want to know about professional experiences (&quot;it&#x27;s all in your CV, tell us about YOU&quot;). I was super uncomfortable with a giant looking glass looking into my soul. It was awkward.<p>Company was 100-200 employees.<p>Is this what being screened for cultural fit looks like?
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rubyfan
Yes, many companies do it from the 10 person to the 10,000. It’s more
important at 10-50 person range to ensure you don’t have disrupters. It’s
entirely unneeded at larger scale but you still see it.

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culturalfitt
I can understand it. I just thought it was a bit too extreme. At some point it
seemed like I was interviewing them (but I hadn't asked any questions).

They seemed a bit bummed out when my hobbies weren't traveling around the
world or helping impoverished communities in my spare time. They asked me what
great thing I wanted to learn next and when I say $tool_X, I could feel the
disappointment.

But it was good to see this first hand. On one hand, I think maybe HR is
running the cultural filter a bit too high... who knows if the engineering
culture is like that?

On the other hand, if that alone without asking a single question about my
experience or skills is enough to reject me... that's a bit too extreme. I
guess I'll find out soon enough.

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rubyfan
my outlook on those sorts of filtering activities is that if it doesn’t fit
and that’s what’s most important to the company then it might be in your favor
anyway.

When your work contribution is secondary to other things, I question a
company’s long term resolve.

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victoriap
Austria is quite a small country and I wouldn't assume culture differs a lot
across companies. Which type of work was it?

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culturalfitt
Backend software development.

