the hack
for hiring:
Redefining
Culture Fit
and
Culture Add
Let’s Solve Your Most Expensive Problem:
Over 50% of new hires don’t succeed within 18 months - costing up to $240,000 per person.
89% of hiring failures are a lack of culture fit -- not skills.
Employees in toxic workplace culture environments are 10× more likely to quit.
In Three Easy Steps:
Define the Culture - CEO or Manager completes proprietary assessment to clearly articulate collaboration norms.
Test for Culture Fit - Candidates screened for cultural alignment based on decision making process - no demographic inputs.
Successful Onboarding - Reduce churn, boost retention, curate belonging.
WHY CULTURE COMES FIRST
You can’t hire for a culture you haven’t defined.
Most companies try to hire for “culture fit” before culture is clearly defined.
When culture is explicit:
Hiring criteria become grounded
Onboarding accelerates
Managers know what to reinforce
Teams stabilize as they grow
Culture definition is the prerequisite for predictable hiring without demographic bias.
What is Culture?
Culture is NOT:
Your Values
Your Mission
Giving Program
Perks/Benefits
Culture is about belonging.
Culture functions as a Knowledge Filter, helping people track the unspoken rules of engagement: how to act, which behaviors are acceptable, and how to fit in.
But every culture filters for success and failure with its own criteria. In one, challenging ideas means you’re bold; in another, it means you’re insubordinate. These hidden differences explain why so many hires fail—not because they lack skill, but because what comes naturally to them is incompatible with the culture they’re in.
The Culture Compatibility Test surfaces these rules and makes belonging measurable and predictable. When leaders map their culture they can hire with confidence, onboard with clarity, and retain talent by creating environments people won’t want to leave.
The result? Healthier workplaces, stronger performance, and measurable savings in turnover and lost productivity.
culture is layered:
Workplace Culture has 3 layers:
Individual: Each person brings a preferred way of making decisions, communicating, and creating value.
Team: Groups develop shared habits for how work actually gets done.
Organization: Leadership sets the broader rules for what gets rewarded, tolerated, or ignored.
When these layers point in the same direction, culture scales naturally as a well-functioning system..
When they don’t, teams burn energy navigating friction instead of doing their job.
How Culture Works:
Culture starts at the top.
Each leader has their own knowledge filter.
The knowledge filter of the leader defines the culture of the team.
Cultures nest within each other like Russian nesting dolls
That’s why two teams can have wildly different cultures in the same organization
And why the culture of the entire organization changes with a new CEO
THE PROBLEM
Hiring fails when culture is assumed.
Resumes show experience.
Interviews show potential.
Neither reliably shows:
How someone makes decisions under pressure
How they handle conflict
How they create value with this team
How they respond to this leadership style
When culture isn’t explicit, hiring relies on instinct alone — and pays for it later with 50% of hires.
Every individual rehire deletes a minimum of $100K from your bottom line.
THE SOLUTION
Predict compatibility before you commit.
The Hack uses a short, science-backed assessment to identify how people process information, make decisions, and interact at work.
Instead of asking — “Is this person talented?”
We ask — “Will this person thrive inside this system?”
This is not a personality test.
It’s a behavioral and decision-making diagnostic.
WHAT THIS PRODUCES
What hiring teams actually get
Depending on scope:
A 5–10 minute assessment per candidate
Clear profiles showing decision-making and value-creation style
Compatibility insight with leadership and team dynamics
Early signals of predictable friction or misalignment
This turns hiring from a judgment exercise to risk reduction strategy.
Why This Works
Hire for your system — not just the role.
Most tools label individuals.
The Hack reveals how workplace interactions create people systems.
Most people problems aren’t random - they’re predictable.
They’re the result of incompatible decision-making and value-creation styles.
The Hack works because it:
Identifies how people actually process information at work
Shows where those differences compound or conflict
Identifies friction points before they become failures
This reframes culture as a people system that leaders can understand, design, and scale.
After the Hire
Compatibility doesn’t end at selection.
The risk of a mis-hire doesn’t stop at the offer — the first 90 days are critical.
The Hack carries compatibility insight from hiring into onboarding, giving leaders clarity on how to integrate new hires effectively.
From Day 1, leaders and managers know:
How this person makes decisions
What motivates their best work
What support enables faster ramp-up
Where friction is most likely to appear
What to reinforce — and what to watch for
This makes onboarding proactive — not reactive. The result is faster ramp-up and fewer surprises in the first 90 days.
Keep High Performers
Why This Supports Engagement and Retention
Engagement doesn’t come from motivation programs.
It comes from fit between effort and reward.
When people systems are aligned, employees can see how their work translates into success — without constantly recalibrating their approach.
High performers stay engaged because:
Their strengths map cleanly to how value is measured
Their effort is recognized in ways that make sense to them
Progress feels predictable, not political
Retention improves because the system rewards contribution naturally.
Ready to transform your hiring process?
Contact us today to start using
the Culture Compatibility Test!
culture mapping
Map Your culture:
A culture map is more than a tool—it’s a way of building workplaces people truly love. Mapping your culture allows you to curate teams built on belonging that lasts.
Hire for belonging, ensuring candidates feel at home from day one.
Onboard with transparency, removing the guesswork about “how things really work here.”
Retain with intention, creating teams built to last in an environment where they’re understood and valued.
Curating for compatibility doesn’t just create a healthier workplace with higher performance - it can save you millions by preventing bad hires and reducing churn.