Don't do "culture talk", thats where unconscious bias lays and you will end up hiring people that are like you.

There are many awesome people you can hire that you wouldn't hang out after work, and that's OK - you don't have to be friends with all your coworkers, you just have to be able to work together.

Instead, identify qualities & behaviors that your company values or are exhibited by successful employees and ask for examples of the candidate demonstrating them.

"Culture" is a really broad word. I agree that "culture fit" is often cover for "let's hire people who are just like us because I'm more comfortable that way".

Instead, I think we should attempt to really dig down into elements of "culture" and identify the ones that are relevant to the job vs those that are not. For example, some relevant elements might be:

    * Preferred development process.
    * Pace of delivery and willingness to ship bugs.
    * How disputes are settled.
    * Using libraries vs build it in house.
    * Process for adopting new technology.
    * Preferred communication methods. Email vs chat vs video calls vs in-person (back in the pre-plague times).

These are all important topics to address in order to ensure that the potential hire will be able to work effectively in the position, and that they won't be miserable.

And there are plenty of things that are _not_ important:

    * Hobbies and how people spend their time outside of work.
    * Favorite films, music, books, food, drinks, etc.
    * Whether you work on side and/or FOSS projects (unless there's a legal issue with side projects).

All of these things, on both lists, could fall under the nebulous "culture" umbrella. So let's stop using that word and start talking about specifics.

I'd also note that for some of these things I expect the candidate to ask _me_ about them if that's something they care about. In fact, those sorts of questions are a very positive signal to me. It shows that the candidate has some insight into their own work and what makes them happy and productive. I'm very happy to find out that this isn't a good fit _before_ they've started working with me!

I think it's so tricky though. Take:

> * How disputes are settled.

Suppose you pose to the candidate a situation in which they are in the right, and ask them how they would proceed. They respond by giving the impression that they wouldn't easily compromise on their correct point of view. Is this positive or negative?

For many interviewers the answer will unconsciously depend on the candidate's gender. If the candidate is a man it's positive because they are "assertive" and "stick to their guns", whereas if they're a woman it's negative because they're "pushy" and "unwilling to listen to other points of view".

> Suppose you pose to the candidate a situation in which they are in the right, and ask them how they would proceed. They respond by giving the impression that they wouldn't easily compromise on their correct point of view. Is this positive or negative?

This should, ideally, depend on your team and your organization, right? There's no one right answer here.

I agree that there is an opportunity for bias here, but that goes for pretty much any question you could ask. You could ask them about programming languages they've used and find out they've used a lot of different languages. And the bias response would be to think that for men this means they're inquisitive and curious, but for women this means they're flighty and unable to stick with anything.

One thing that I think can help is to talk with the hiring team in advance about what you hope to get out of each question. For example, in asking about how you'd handle a technical dispute, you could focus on whether they would go directly to their teammates or manager before going to the next level up in the management chain. And on the flip side, you may want to make sure that their answer isn't "if I'm right I will never let it go because it's important to be right." By focusing on a few key points you're looking for, it may (I hope) limit the potential for bias.

But it's legitimate to ask about non-technical soft skills in an interview. Those are a _huge_ part of doing any job that involves interacting with other people. And conversely, there are people who are hugely destructive to a team or organization because of the lack of such skills. I don't think the answer to bias is to simply avoid any topic where bias could come into play.

I fail to see how "identify qualities & behaviors that your company values or are exhibited by successful employees and ask for examples of the candidate demonstrating them" is any different than "culture talk"

Corporate culture is not about being similar to your coworkers, it is exactly what you said - company values and ways of working together. Don't get tripped up by the word "culture" - it has multiple meanings.