When you’re doing the hiring process, you may have the following question: How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit?
This question usually arises when you have found great potential employees, but you don’t know which one would be the right hire for your business.
In this article, you’ll learn how to break a hiring tie by evaluating two highly important aspects that any worker should have, and those are an excellent set of skills and a unique adaptation to your company’s culture. Let’s observe:
- How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit?
- Is cultural fit a qualification for hiring?
- What are the skills that you should look for in an employee?
- Why cultural fit and skills are both critical for having a reliable workforce?
- Tiebreaker tips for choosing the right candidate
- Why can Connect Resources help you break a hiring tie?
1. How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit?
Carrying out interviews for selecting a future employee is an exhausting process because you don’t know what to expect and if you’re going to find the right person for the job. But sometimes it happens that you end up finding two candidates that seem to be perfect for filling that spot in your team.
One of those candidates seems to have the right skills for the job, but the other one seems to be the perfect cultural fit, so how do you choose?
Since it’s a crucial decision, you need to know more about how to select the right candidate based on those two criteria. And once you choose the perfect one, you also need to apply the best retention strategies to keep your employees in your company, so they don’t decide to go to another place.
1.1 How to end up with a great hire?
Getting employees for your business might be a difficult task, for this reason, you need to know how to hire employees effectively, so you can ensure that you receive the best fit to fill the open job position.
The first step for making a great hire is by defining the main aspects that you want your employee to have. Prioritize your decision based on the following:
- Cultural fit is not trainable
- Most technical skills can be trained and developed
- Define your corporate culture so you can attract like-minded candidates
- Be specific in your job descriptions in terms of skills, responsibilities, and worker’s attitude
2. Is cultural fit a qualification for hiring?
When you’re evaluating the next candidate for your company, the first aspect that you consider is if the person has what it takes to carry out all the tasks and functions related to the position. You probably don’t think that cultural fit is essential for choosing a candidate.
But, it’s crucial if you want to know the answer to the question: how to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit?
2.1 What is a cultural fit?
One of the most common recruiting challenges that companies face is that they aren’t able to find workers that can be an excellent fit for their business’ vision and goals. This can be solved by selecting a worker that can be an excellent cultural fit for the organization.
An employee that has cultural fit is the one that has a behavior that is aligned with the company’s values, and therefore, they can adapt to the core beliefs of the company and will reflect them when they do their job.
Why is cultural fit important? Let’s observe:
- It ensures collaborative work
- It helps workers to support each other
- It ensures that the worker has the drive and desire to learn
- It ensures excellent performance delivery from the worker
- It helps you have a successful business
- It ensures workers to stay longer and go further in the business
If you’d like to know how to hire employees effectively, you can contact Connect Resources, one of the top-leading agencies in the UAE, that can offer you a comprehensive hiring and recruiting service so you can receive the best employees.
3. What are the skills that you should look for in an employee?
Knowing how to determine the skills that are essential for the open job position is crucial for understanding the answer to the question: How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit?
Looking for the right skills in your workers is the way to go, especially if you’re considering the critical aspects when recruiting senior staff. You want to have experts and specialists to work for you, and to achieve that, they need to prove that they’re skilled in what they do.
3.1 Hard skills
Knowing the importance of hiring the right employee is essential for consolidating a reliable business. For this reason, many employers decide to focus on the hard skills that the candidate has, so they can start enhancing their productivity as a company.
Hard skills refer to the technical knowledge and expertise that the employer has concerning the job. It means that if you’re looking for a payroll specialist, you need someone that is going to deliver an excellent job processing the payments, handling the software, making the tax calculations, and more.
What are some of the hard skills that an employee should have? Let’s observe:
- Management skills: logistics, planning, business knowledge, and more.
- Design
- Writing
- Analytical skills: research, forecasting, data management, and more.
- Computer skills
- Technical skills
- Data analysis
- Language skills
3.2 Soft skills
One of the best hiring tips for managers that probably you don’t know is focusing on the soft skills of the candidate when you’re trying to break a hiring tie. When the top two candidates have the same hard skills, evaluating soft skills could help you make a decision.
What are some of the soft skills that you should consider in a candidate? Let’s observe:
- Communication
- Creativity
- Problem-solving
- Empathy
- Time management
- Conflict-resolution
- Teamwork
- Flexibility
- Leadership
4. Why cultural fit and skills are both important for having a solid workforce?
Now that you know what culture fit is and what are the skills that you need in your employees, you’re still wondering the following question: How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit?
If you have two candidates to choose from, you can make one of the three different choices that you have so that you can make smart hiring.
4.1 Hiring a candidate based only on skillset
The first choice you have is breaking the tie based only on skillset. Consider which candidate has more hard and soft skills, with no regard for cultural fit.
This might not be the best decision because when you hire a person with a high skill level, but that doesn’t fit your team or company’s culture, it’s going to be a bad situation.
The fact that the candidate has the necessary knowledge to be a great worker doesn’t mean that they’re going to add team value. If they turn out to be a negative and conflictive person, it can cost you time and money because you’re going to have to replace them eventually.
4.2 Hiring a candidate based only on cultural fit
The second choice you have is hiring the candidate that has a great potential to fit the team but lacks the skill set to perform the job.
You need to be very careful with this decision because you need to hire a person that has the drive and ability to learn so that you can train them according to your specific way of business.
4.3 Hiring a candidate with some skill set and great cultural fit
The last choice you can make is the ideal one, hiring the candidate that proves to have some skill set and also shows to be highly interested in becoming part of your team and adapting to your company’s culture.
One of the most significant advantages of HR outsourcing is that an agency can help you find a candidate that has enough qualifications and proves to have cultural adaptation for your company. Connect Resources can help you with it, and the best part is that you won’t have to worry.
5. Tiebreaker tips for choosing the right candidate
To find the answer to the following question: How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit? You need to know the best tiebreaker tips so you can make a great decision without prioritizing one aspect over the other.
- Don’t think merely on culture fit, but rather on culture add: hire a person that can contribute to the team with a diverse set of traits, values, and backgrounds.
- Hire a candidate that supports growth and values professional development
- Prepare great questions to evaluate hard and soft skills
- Evaluate which one could be the best long-term addition
One of the ways in which outsourcing companies in Dubai can help you is by providing a shortlist of candidates that have enough qualifications to be the best worker for your business, so you can apply these tiebreaker tips and select the right one.
6. How to determine cultural fit and skills in a job interview?
To finally know the answer to How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit? You first need to determine the skills of each candidate and the capability to adapt to your business, so you know which one of the two potential employees could be the best for your business.
If you know the essential skills that an employee needs to have to fill the open position, and you are aware of your cultural needs as a company, you are making your way to do a great hire.
6.1 Conduct an experiential interview
One of the best hiring tips for managers when conducting an interview is making it an experiential one. It means that you have to evaluate the candidate’s skills by doing a test or asking some technical questions to know more about their qualifications.
How can you conduct an experiential interview?
- Assess the candidate’s skills in action
- Carry out activities related to the job position
- Make a list of issues that may arise in the job and ask them to solve them
- Ask technical questions related to the job
- Carry out a brief skill test
6.2 Ask cultural fit interview questions
Knowing the importance of hiring the right employee makes you necessary to prepare the proper question for the interview so that you can know more about the candidate’s background and previous experience.
What are some of the questions you may ask each candidate? Let’s observe:
- Are you willing to be trained?
- How have you felt working on a team?
- Have you been successful when working with colleagues?
- What is your experience with previous managers?
- What is the aspect of our company that interests you the most?
- How could you describe your best work environment?
By asking cultural fit questions, you can determine if they can adapt to your company’s context. This method is usually known as behavioral interviewing.
7. Why can Connect Resources help you break a hiring tie?
Once you know the answer to the question: How to choose between two top candidates based on skillset vs. cultural fit? You may want to receive all the help that you can get since it’s not an easy decision.
Connect Resources is a recruitment agency that offers services to several companies in a variety of industries in the UAE. It has been providing this service for more than 20 years, and it has a team of specialists that is going to understand your business and your requirements so you can receive the best candidate without worrying about breaking a candidate tie.
Would you like to contact Connect Resources for recruitment services? You can call at +971 433 166 88 or send an email to contact@connectresources.ae, and you’ll talk to one of their representatives that will gladly answer all of your questions.
