Ask HN: How do companies go about getting cultural fit with a candidate?

Assuming you're asking about assessing cultural fit, we do a couple of semi-overt things.

First, we make sure that every interviewer, including initial contacts and phone screens, offers the candidate a chance to ask their own questions and I make it a point to state that "you're picking us just as much as we're picking you". From the questions the candidate asks, we get some insight into what's on their mind and they get their questions answered and can form a more informed opinion of us as well.

Second, we generally schedule an informal lunch in our cafeteria (we buy, of course) with the candidate and a 1-3 of our engineers, often from the team they're interviewing with but sometimes just other non-team peers. This is explicitly meant to be informal and similar-level peers, but you can't help sharing data about who we are, how we interact with each other and the candidate, and learning/teaching whether there's likely a good fit.

If you're asking about creating/enhancing cultural fit once hired, that's an ordinary leadership challenge.

I also had such a lunch on an on-site interview day and must say that I really liked it. Not only can the company assess your fit but you can also assess whether you like the company and your future colleagues.

I think it's important to first know which traits you deem to be 'culturally fit'.

Before coming up with a solution, the first step should always be defining the problem.

This could be worth running a workshop with the people you know are good cultural fits to come up with this trait-list.

In an interview (real-world application), similar to Google's layover test, I would suggest randomly picking people in the office to have an informal (but guided) chat around interests and everything after the fact of the candidate being competent enough to actually do the work.

As soon as that meeting concludes, send a form to all employees in that interview to rate against the traits you've defined.

Come up with a score tactic, if you want, and anything above, let's say 85%, is a fit.

Side note: You can be specific in your choice of words in the job posting to make it more likely that you attract the right type of people.

I recently learned that the concept of cultural fit was originally about being a fit for the process and work culture, not about being best friends with one's teammates.

What does that actually mean?

Well, for instance, someone who wants or needs to be told exactly what they're expected to do and how to do it is not a good cultural fit for us - we need people who can show initiative and direct their own work.

Someone who wants to work 6pm-2am is also not a good cultural fit. While we offer some flexibility in work hours, we rely too much on reasonably-synchronous communication (aka slack) for collaboration.

And we can't hire selfish or self-important assholes, because they're toxic and will ruin morale.

All the rest (beer or wine or non-drinker? Loves basketball? Plays an instrument?) is beside the point and usually just an excuse for various types of otherwise illegal discrimination. Hire someone who's capable of acting like a professional when in the office. Someone who can be courteous and communicates well. Once your company is past the size where you can all fit in a sedan at one time, you don't need to all be best friends.

You can't take all the context away; we just try to make it as low-pressure and "normal" a lunch as is possible, given the obvious context. (And yes, we've had candidates "fail" the lunch slot. I'm sure we've "failed" the lunch slot for some of the candidates who ended up turning us down. Those are usually beneficial "fails" IMO.)