Podcast
In this episode of Get Reworked, we speak with Andre Martin, former CLO and author of "Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever," about why it's so important to discuss how work gets done in our workplaces so employees — and employers — can find the right fit for them.
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"Hiring managers have got to be more transparent. We have to be comfortable in being able to talk about the madness behind the method. Talk about the places where it's kind of hard to do work here because of these factors and talk about them in terms of we're always trying to get better — but that transparency is going to pay off .... ," said Andre. "We know that people more and more are looking for transparency, they're looking for vulnerability. They're looking for a place that is human and imperfect. And so my hope is that hiring managers will give talent a little bit more of a view into the company, because then they will find the right person and the people that opt out should have probably opted out."
Highlights of the conversation include:
- What's causing the crisis of commitment today.
- Why Andre wants to see a return to the 20-year career in one workplace.
- The difference between boredom and comfort in a job.
- Why a frank discussion of how a company works should be a critical part of any job interview — for the interviewer and the interviewee.
- How Andre differentiates between being the "right fit" and "fitting in."
Plus, hosts Nidhi Madhavan and Siobhan Fagan talk with Andre about why the aspirational language companies use to describe themselves often do more harm than good, why he believes there's a company for everyone and why he thinks companies should re-recruit their employees on a regular basis. Listen in for more.
Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].
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Show Notes
- Andre Martin on LinkedIn
- Andre's book: "Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever"
Episode Transcript
Note: This transcript has been edited for space and clarity
Andre Martin: Companies need to just press pause and get back to the secret sauce that made them great — what is the way of working within this company when we are at our best — to catalog it, to codify it, and then to make sure it's communicated and done consistently over time.
Siobhan Fagan: You just heard from Andre Martin. Andre is an organizational psychologist who has held some key leadership advisory and boardrooms dedicated to employee engagement and culture at some of the biggest consumer brands in the world, including target, Nike, Google, Mars and Disney. He is the author of "Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever." And that's why we brought him here today.
Nidhi Madhavan: I'm Nidhi Madhavan, editor at Reworked, and I'm super excited to jump into today's conversation. So, Siobhan, are you ready?
Siobhan: I am so ready.
Nidhi: All right, let's Get Reworked.
Siobhan: Welcome to the podcast, Andre.
Andre: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here today.
Right Fit, Wrong Fit: A Crisis for Both Employee and Employer
Siobhan: So we brought you on because you have a book that is coming out shortly. Actually, at the time of airing it will already be out, called "Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever."
And I noticed one thing when reading the book, I noticed many things when reading the book. But one thing that I noticed was this crisis of commitment that you raised. And you talked about how the workplace is facing a problem where employers are not keeping employees, employees aren't sticking with employers. And I'm wondering if the crisis applies to both sides?
Andre: It's a great question. And in my mind, it does, really, since the beginning of time, we are constantly looking for connection, and belonging. And we look for it for security, we look for it to learn, we look for it for growth.
And what we're seeing in the workplace today is that you're seeing this age of infinite browsing. And I'm stealing the term from Pete Davis and one of my favorite books called "Dedicated," where he talks about this idea that we're endlessly searching for a place where the grass is greener. And we know that that place doesn't really exist.
And so when we look at this crisis of commitment, we're finding that on one side employees are dissatisfied with work, $8.1 trillion of lost productivity in the workplace globally due to disengagement. And on the other side, we're watching companies facing into these super difficult challenges of our time. And they're needing more and more commitment in order to solve the problems that they face.
And so it's really happening on both sides. And the funniest thing about it is that when you think about all the job and company jumping that we're seeing, those transitions take effort, they require energy, they require resilience, they take all of our creative energy. And they actually asked us to put it towards context, as opposed to our craft or the thing that we might be really great at in the world.
So net net, everybody's sort of losing. And so it's time to maybe find a different way to think about it.
Returning to the 20-Year Career Commitment
Siobhan: When I think about this disengagement, and when I think about employers looking for commitment, the dynamics have kind of changed, like the job for life went out the window back in the '70s – '80s. So what is possible as far as what an employer can provide an employee in terms of commitment?
Andre: I would actually love us to return to the idea that the 20-year / 30-year career is possible. We know that organizations are at their core dynamic. And with the speed of change that's happening in the world, the place that you work today, the job that you do today, it's going to be vastly more complex, and more interesting tomorrow.
And so maybe again, we can step back, open our eyes really wide, take a deep breath and ask the question of, is there an opportunity where we could create an environment where someone could be at a company, spend 30 years and continue to grow and develop and find and do the very things that they're interested in to achieve both their own purpose while they're helping the company?
New Job Excitement vs. Current Job Comfort
Nidhi: So with this idea of employees becoming less loyal, or job hopping more, is this really because they're unhappy or they're having that bad fit? Or are there just too many options right now to make staying worthwhile or they just being tempted to easily.
Andre: I think it's a combination of both of those things. On one hand, we are so much more aware of each other's experiences in today's world, via social media and TikTok and Facebook, we actually get to see what everybody else is up to, and all the potential places we could join. And because of that, we sort of view the world through this idea that maybe that place is better than where I am, maybe that job is better than the one I have. And so it's sort of causing us to be a little bit less loyal, and probably look a little bit more often for something new.
One of the things that was interesting the book is we interviewed probably 100 plus leaders, and my interviews often miss took the comfort they felt in their current role for boredom, or lack of momentum. And what's really interesting is when you get into a state of deep commitment, it changes the orientation to your brain chemistry in many ways. So the feeling of something new is excitement. It's dopamine, it's this really, really visceral feeling that sort of hits our entire body.
But when you're in a place of commitment, that's where oxytocin comes in. And that feeling is much more like a warm, gentle hug. And so on one hand, we are job hopping, because we see a lot more opportunity. On the other hand, we're sort of geared towards excitement over this warm hug of commitment. And I think that's causing much of what's happening in the workplace today.
Nidhi: Yeah, absolutely. And so I'm curious, you talk about this idea of the difference between the excitement of the new and sort of the warm comfort of commitment, what are the benefits then of commitment for employees? What are they getting out of that long-term commitment that they might be missing out of otherwise?
Andre: I think there's a few things right, when you're in a company for a long time you build a really strong social network, you get a deep understanding for the way that company works, how they solve problems, create strategy, selling ideas, develop people, give feedback, socialize, gather, how we do work every day. And once you have that system figured out, you then are in a very pure way getting to practice your craft, right, that means you get to spend all your creative energy on the very thing you're best at in the world.
So one of the benefits of commitment is that I believe you get to practice your craft at a really deep level. The second thing that happens with commitment is it really allows you to tamp down stress, tamp down anxiety tamped down many of the things that we're seeing in a lot of literature around burnout, right now, when we have commitment, we tend to have strong relationships, we tend to have trust, we tend to have people in the system who are looking out for us. And so we have all these protective forces that are allowing us to manage the ups and downs of the world that we see as we try to solve these big problems ahead of us.
An Intentional Idea Leads to an Accidental Book
Siobhan: Andre, I think about your book, and it's what I would term, an accidental book. And I'll explain that here, in that it doesn't sound like the book that you wrote was the theory that you started out with. Can you talk about the origins of where you got this idea of right fit, wrong fit?
Andre: I love that question. So I was originally approached by the publisher to write a book on culture in this new age of work, right? So with all the changes of COVID, and hybrid working and remote, really asking the question of how do we create a really good culture. And so like any researcher, I'm a geek at heart, I started my process, talking to people close to my network CEOs, CHROs highly successful talent and really ask him this question of what makes a great culture.
And two things became really clear, really fast. The first was, there was no definitive answer. Right? There were a few commonalities, but everybody was pointing to sort of different factors. And the second thing upon reflection was this idea that you know, what's funny about the world right now is we talk a lot about toxic culture. We talk a lot about bad culture. And when I step back and think about the origin of any company, no company sets out to create a really awful experience for their people. It's totally counterintuitive, right?
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And so, I started sort of sitting in that idea and asking the question of, hey, maybe this isn't about good or bad culture. Maybe there's no right or wrong way to build a company. Maybe it's really about fundamentally the company itself, understanding how they work when they're at their best, and finding talent who work the way they work.
And that was really the start of what became the interviews where I sat with, again about 100 and plus interviewees, and asked them two simple questions. The first one was, tell me about your most right fit experience, the moment in your career when you had a deep and authentic commitment to the way a company worked day to day. And then I asked them to tell me about their wrong fit experience, the moment when it felt harder than it should to be a success. And those interviews were, I still doing today, just because they're so interesting, they became so instrumental in creating this theory of fit, it really came from the very people trying to find a place where they can be at their best.
Finding the Right Fit: How We Work, How Organizations Work, Culture Decks
Siobhan: So when we're talking about finding the fit, you come down to this idea of how we work and how we as individuals work and how organizations work. And I was curious how you managed to pull out all of these different questions that you ask to establish how we work. So how did you go about that process?
Andre: The process had a few components to it. First, were again, back to the interviews, really asking people in the day to day, what made the biggest difference to an experience being a right fit a wrong fit experience, that's when they talked about things like how a company sells in ideas, how they collaborate, how they set strategy, how they develop their people give feedback, their relationship with time, their philosophy of recovery, all those things came up. And so with those sorts of big categories of how we work day to day, I then took those and started to dig into research and articles and background and sort of get at a set of think about 55 questions that are in the book that you can use either as a company to figure out how the company works, or as an individual to figure out how you work at your best day-to-day.
Nidhi: Absolutely. So while reading the book, one thing I noticed that you talked about, you know, going back to this idea of culture, were culture decks and the sort of supercharged employer branding that we're seeing these days, do you think those things are becoming a distraction to job seekers, in terms of finding what actually matters to them?
Andre: It's a great question. First, I'd like to say that the original intent of those culture decks was good. They were really trying in a authentic and clear way to do some of this work around helping talent understand how a company works. But if we fast forward over the last 15-20 years, companies have really become products, and they become brands in and of themselves. And if you go to any career site out there, you will see some of the most aspirational and inspirational language you could ever read, every place is the best place to work.
And so I think what's happening there is that marketing effort has become really detrimental to both companies and talent, finding right fit, because what happens if you think about an interview process, right, it is the equivalent of a first date, I as a candidate show up in my best outfit, with well-rehearsed interview answers with this really, really well-honed, resume. And the other side, the company shows up on their best day talking about their values and how they work and why it's a great place to be there. And in that we're sort of in this first date mentality where nobody's really being themselves.
And if you think about every relationship you've ever had, we've had a lot of first dates in our lives by the second, third, fourth date, those relationships end. And it's because instead of seeing somebody on their best day, we see them on a random Tuesday morning, and our orientation changes. And so what's happened with some of the brand marketing, for all its good intent, is it sort of created this moment where everybody's first date ready, and we're not actually seeing the reality of the experience we might be walking into.
Disconnects: The Interview and the Reality
Nidhi: Absolutely, I think that makes a lot of sense. So obviously, there's a big disconnect there. Are there any other disconnects that are happening when a person's interviewing for a role versus when they're hired and realizing that it's not a fit?
Andre: This was one of the most fascinating parts of the book, there's a few things happening. The first one is that because of the marketing and this first date, ready interviewing process, when we talk to interviewees, they started to describe three different versions of a company, right?
The first version is the version that you are recruited into. It's the aspirational version. It's the company on its best day. It's everything you could ever imagine that you would want in a place to work. And then there's the company that you walk into during orientation or onboarding. And this is the best version of the real company. It's the version that we want to show you. It's the best leader standing up on stage, talking about what it's like to work there. It's the products and the impact that they're having in the world. It's the best systems that actually work and you can actually use.
And then the third version is the version that you go off and work in the rest of your life. And what we're finding in the interviews is that in many of those wrong fit experiences, the distance between the first person and the third is so great that we just tamped down engagement, energy, trust, and we put people in a very real state of worry that they made the wrong choice.
The second thing that came up for our interviewees was really interesting, many of them when we asked them to go back over their wrong fit experience and tell me the moment when they knew it was a wrong fit. Most of them pointed to the interview process, where they said, You know what, when I look back, I knew it was the wrong place, and I just didn't pay attention to the information.
And one of the things that happens to us as we suffer from confirmation bias, when we are motivated to make a choice, right, we want a new job, we want a new place to work we want the better title and better pay, we tend to overemphasize information that is going to take us in that direction and undervalue information that might be contrary.
And then the last disconnect is really back to this idea of misperceiving comfort, that warm hug of oxytocin for boredom, or lack of momentum. And again, talking to our interviewees when we said you left your right fit experience for something else, as you look back. Do you regret that? Although many said they benefited from the journey, they wish they would have had this frame, because they probably wouldn't have left the place where ultimately they had right fit in the first place.
Be Really, Really Clear About What You Want
Siobhan: Andre, I'm listening to you. And I'm thinking about that excitement and the sort of supercharged experience of going through searching for and potentially accepting a new role. And I'm wondering what people could potentially do to tamp down that inclination towards confirmation bias so they don't jump into these wrong fits, even when their gut is telling them 'Don't go there Will Roger.'
Andre: Super generous question, I would start and in the book, we help them do this, the first thing I would tell anybody to do is don't start the job search by looking for a job. As soon as you open that first job description of that first potential role, you're in the marketing machine. Right. So the first thing that I encourage people to do is to spend a lot more time in self reflection, in the book we put in six or seven excursions is what we call them. And they're really reflective exercises to help people understand what they value in big decisions, what kind of leader they work best for, what kind of environment they want to be in, helps them think about the life they're trying to build, and also what they're trying to solve for right now.
So the first thing is just get really, really clear about what you want. And if you have that, that helps you sort of see the role for what it is, not what you hope it is. I think secondly, it's it's really also in the questions that you ask. And so making sure that you're asking questions allow you to get a little bit more of that, what is it going to be like to work here on a random Tuesday feel for the company?
I think third is triangulate everything that you hear, right, much of the information we get in interviewing is subjective and internal to the company. And in this day and age, there's so many wonderful resources, from videos out on YouTube, to the employee review sites, to articles on these companies, I just encourage people to say unless you've heard it from two or three different sources, don't trust that it's true.
And so I guess in the end, it's really about, be a great anthropologist, be a great interviewer, be a great journalist and really dig in to make sure that you know, as much as you possibly can around the company you may decide to join.
Wrong Fit, Right Fit Isn't Always Black and White
Nidhi: One of the other questions I think, that we had brought up was, how can a new hire distinguish whether an organization is a wrong fit or a right fit? Or what if it's just more difficult for a lot of people? It's not always black and white, there are aspects that are good, there are aspects that are bad. How long should they persevere in those types of situations?
Andre: Well, again, I hate to give a consultant answer, but it just depends. It depends on the person and it really depends on what you're solving for.
One of the things that we talked about in the book is that hey, the job isn't always the primary thing that's driving your life. And so one of the excursions we ask people to do is to think about this idea of what are you solving for right now? Are you solving to really move and progress in your career in the moment? Or are you solving for something in life? And so just starting there to go, know what you're solving for?
I think secondly is really again back to know yourself really well. And know what you need out of the job that you're in. The last piece, and this is probably the most important is the best measure of whether or not it is true wrong fit is in the extent that the experience at work is impacting your larger life in a negative way.
So what we know is that in talking to the interviewees the wrong fit experiences were some of the most compelling, poignant and cathartic conversations I've ever had. Because many of them go into these wrong fit experiences. And they watch everyone else being a success. They see people who have the same skills as them the same abilities as them continue to rise and grow. And they feel like they're walking through mud every day. The way that we described it in the book is it feels like you're riding with your non dominant hand every day. It's lower quality. It's frustrating, it's higher stress. And what happened over time to the interviewees, is they talked about this idea of, I started to lose confidence in myself, I started to lose competence in my craft, I started to doubt myself in conversations, and more than anything, I looked back at all those years of success I had before this wrong fit experience and I questioned whether or not they were real.
And for me, I look at that. And I'm like when you get in that place. When you're feeling that way, it is vital that you, instead of trying to work harder, which is what the interviewees tend to do, it's important that you step back. And I always, in those moments turn to people in my life that have been there for a long time. And one of the things that I do, and it may sound like a silly strategy, but when I start to lose myself in some of these experiences, I call the people who knew me when I was at my best. And I just say, remind me again, what am I good at? Where am I good? And they can help you sort of regain a little bit of that sense of it's not you. It's not about your performance. It's not that you're not good or you're not gifted, it's that you just don't fit in the system that you're a part of.
And I think people realizing that, again, in the interviews, many of them said, right after the conversation, that it was one of those cathartic things they've done, because they've been holding on to this idea that it was all about them for 20 years.
Nidhi: So Andre, it's really interesting where you talk about when you're at a place that's the wrong fit, you feel it's just an awful experience. How much of that is subjective, though? Do you think that a bad culture is a bad culture no matter who you are? Or do you think there are some cultures where one person may be thriving and another person may be struggling?
Andre: This was really the nature of the book, this was the turning point for me in writing "Wrong Fit, Right Fit," because think about it, I've been in worked it, you know, some of the biggest, most revered brands in the world. And in those experiences, I'll tell you this for about 60% of people in those companies, they were on fire, right, they would walk in every day committed and energized and excited. And for about 40%, you could see that they were struggling, you could see that they were really good people capable of really great things.
And then when we got in the interviews that just became more and more validated as we went, which is in every one of these cases, the individuals in wrong fit experiences were looking around and they were seeing people who were highly successful. They were seeing people who were happy. They were seeing people who walk in everyday energized, but they weren't feeling that way.
And so again, I think part of what we've done in the conversation around culture is we've made it sort of one-size-fits-all. You're either good or you're bad. You're either toxic, or you're engaging. And really the truth of it is there's probably a company for everyone. Just like there's a partner for everyone. You just have to be able to find the place where the system makes sense to you, the way of working makes sense to you. And the very ways that the company does something, work in the way that you'd like to work.
And I'll give you a real personal example there. So one of the companies I joined when I got there, I started to realize that the way that you socialize an idea is that you put it in a really beautiful deck. You create that deck with poetry with beautiful language and great pictures and a really inspirational tone. And then you shop that deck around to 20, 30, 40 people. They give you feedback I often on the design of the deck as much as the content, and then you go back, you revise it, you do that again and again, and maybe eventually down the line, you get to do that work.
Now, for a lot of people, that is probably everything they love to do every day, they love to create decks, they love to socialize, they love to rework things. For me, personally, I don't like to live my life on paper, I like to do stuff. And so I look back, I'm like, if my hiring manager would have told me that, that's the way that you get an idea over the line in that company, I probably wouldn't have gone, because I like to spend my time doing the work as opposed to talking about how to get the work done. And that's just a very small example of what it feels like to be in a place that, that maybe doesn't fit.
Siobhan: I love that example, Andre. And I honestly think you've used the word cathartic quite a few times with your interviewers. And I can see how that would be because some people are going to love creating PowerPoint after PowerPoint and never actually delivering what is in the deck. And I'm kind of with you where that would be my idea of hell.
So I guess we've been focusing a lot on the would-be employee side or the employee side. And I'm wondering, I want to bring the employer in here. And I'm wondering how much in the case where a company has I mean, the 60/40 breakdown that you shared is pretty startling, could accompany bring some of that 40% of people around? Or is it just a case that the wrong fit will always be a wrong fit?
Andre: I really think they could. And so if we start with the idea of how a company grows, and helps us understand maybe what companies can start to do a little bit better, to get more of that 40% to feel like they're a part of the system.
So as a company grows, every company starts off with the founder and six or seven people, right, and then we grow sometimes exponentially every single year, what tends to happen, we forget this when every time we bring in a new employee, they're not just bringing their technical skill with them, they're bringing the way that they like to work, their favorite work platforms, their favorite ways to kick off teams to give feedback to develop to project manage, they're bringing in all that stuff with them. And if we're not really good at selecting people that work like us, then what they ended up bringing is a whole different way of working into the system.
So you think about some of these companies that can add 10/15/20,000 people a year, there's no way they're able to onboard them and make sure that everyone understands that system really well. And so over time, you look at some of the biggest companies in the world, and they are a amalgamation of every leaders preference for how work gets done. And I really believe personally, based on both experience in the interviews, that that is where a lot of that $8.1 trillion of lost productivity that Gallup estimates is due to disengagement, lies, because people are having to spend more and more of their creative energy as the company gets bigger, on coordination of work, to figure out how do I meet with this leader or this team in this way, and use this project management tool or this collaboration tool or this video tool?
And so one of the things we talked about in the book is companies need to just press pause, and get back to the secret sauce that made them great. What is the way of working within this company, when we are at our best, to catalog it, to codify it and then to make sure it's communicated and done consistently over time.
One of my favorite interviews was a creative director who talked about her right fit experience being a place that not only did they assess for ways of working, coming in through the interview, every year, everybody in the company was re-recruited back to that way of working. And for a lot of people that can feel really constraining that I don't get to do the things I want to do. She had just such a poignant point, where she said, you know, what that did for me, is because I didn't have to worry about how to create the right deck. It was already templatized for me, I could focus on my craft, and my creative work. That is I could drop the thing that I'm best at into that template and get it out into the world.
And so I think there's this moment where companies need to really think hard about what are their work principles, the norms, what are the work practices, the tools that we use? And what are the platforms, the technology that guides us and make sure that those things are consistently used, and that's going to really help everybody feel a little bit more productive. If I'm more productive, that probably means I'm practicing my craft. And if I'm practicing my craft, there's a good chance I'm more engaged. And if I'm more engaged over time, you're going to see higher and higher levels of commitment.
What Questions Do Job Candidates and Hiring Managers Need to Be Asking Each Other?
Nidhi: Absolutely. And so going back to the hiring process, we know on the outer side of it, so we've talked about the idea that we need to move away from these aspirational cultural views, when it comes to really getting down to what the right fit is, what kind of questions should both job candidates and hiring managers be asking each other?
Andre: Fantastic. And again, many of these came from the interviews that we did.
On the candidate side, it's really this idea of ask any question that can get to what it's like to work at the company on a random Tuesday in October. Right? So what is the profile of the person who succeeds? Here is a great question, what happens here, that doesn't happen in other places? This one allows you to get at some of the nuance within the company, you can simply ask how does work get done? You can ask your interviewer to walk me through a day in the life. Tell me what's on your calendar? What kind of meetings do you have? How do you spend your time, you can ask about the reputation of your team, you can ask about what are the non-negotiables in the company. And one of my favorites that came up as you can ask a question about a new joiner, who came into the company and very quickly felt like they had been there forever? Who are they? What did they do? How do they work? And how did they get there so fast? And so those are a few questions that the candidates can ask.
Another one that I like is just really asked that question about what's your relationship to time? And how do you think about recovery? Because again, those are two factors that more and more, you're watching candidates choose or not choose companies because of.
On the company side, I think really asking candidates to talk to them about the time in their career when they were happiest, right? Everybody has that picture in their mind. And to ask, Where were you? What kind of work were you doing? How did work get done day-to-day? How did people make decisions, collaborate, manage projects, all those things that gives you such a generous and positive place to start.
I think a second question is really all about the leader you work for, we know that Gallup says 70% of our engagement is due to our leaders. So asking that question about who is your perfect leader? What kind of leader do you like to work for?
And last but not least, really asking them about their non-negotiables? If these things aren't here, you're not able to do the job we're asking you to do, so asking upfront, what are the things they need to be a success is another very generous and informative question to ask.
Siobhan: Andre, I'm sitting here thinking about how much more of a humane process the interviewing process would be if these questions came up early and if it was comfortable to be raising these questions. I want to close out just asking you for some advice for potentially hiring managers for how to make this kind of safe space where these conversations can happen, and to actually live through the responses that they get? So not jumping into the hire, if it's not the right fit.
Andre: I think the first advice I'd have for hiring managers is don't get seduced by technical skill alone, right. So I've been in this world of talent and learning and culture for 25 years. And more and more because of how fast the workplace is changing, I'm much more interested in having someone who works like I do, as opposed to having technical skill that might be the best in the world. Because if you're in a system that doesn't work for you, I don't care how good you are at your craft, you're not going to be a success. So first and foremost is just don't get too enamored with technical skill or pedigree, really look for the people that fit the way that you work. Look for someone that you could sit beside every single day for 20 years. And really think about the long-term relationship.
I think secondly is hiring managers have got to be more transparent. We have to be comfortable in being able to talk about the madness behind the method. Talk about the places where it's kind of hard to do work here because of these factors and talk about them in terms of we're always trying to get better, but that transparency is going to pay off. And when I was speaking to CHROs and CEOs about hey, why don't we interview this way? Why aren't we just totally honest and authentic about how work gets done the company and the truth of it is many of them are just scared the talent won't come that they won't come because they don't see this as a wonderful perfect ideal place. And we know that that's not the aim, we know that people more and more are looking for transparency, they're looking for vulnerability. They're looking for a place that is human and imperfect. And so my hope is that hiring managers will give talent a little bit more of a view into the company, because then they will find the right person, the people that opt out should have probably opted out.
And last but not least, I think this idea of a realistic job preview is really important, you know, job descriptions, I come from HR love my industry, but job descriptions are sort of the bane of my existence, right? You read them, and they are the totality of what you could do in this role for the next 25 years. And what happens often, to people who join a company and leave very quickly is there's a mismatch of expectation, the job description, they thought they were being hired into, hey, it turns out that actually that list of 30 things you might get to do, you're only doing these two for the next 18 months. And by the way, on top of these bullets, there's 75 other things that we need you to do as well. And in not telling people what the next 18 months of the job actually looks like, what it's going to feel like to do that work, we do them a disservice. And I think, again, we're trying to entice them through marketing, when, if we really told them what they were up against what we're asking them to do, most people like a challenge, most people want to have to do hard work. I mean, I think about the Obama quote, right? Hard things are hard. And I like hard things.
And so again, providing more of a realistic job preview is going to help people to make the right choice, the right choice for them, and the right choice for the company.
Fit Is Not Fitting In
Nidhi: So when we're talking about fit, I think this hasn't come out because you know, there's this concept of fitting in. And as that applies to certain communities, marginalized or diverse communities, what does that mean for them, you know, what does it mean when it comes to trying to fit in versus finding a place that necessarily fits with them? And wouldn't the idea of finding people that are all working the same way you do, would that lead to a continuation of the status quo by any means?
Andre: I'm glad you brought it up, right. So in the book, we actually talked about this idea of, of fit is not fitting in. And again, for those marginalized communities, they've often been asked to try to fit in to be accepted in neighborhoods, in schools and in companies. And I think what we're trying to say is, the more that anyone has to try to fit in, the more that taxes their ability to be really great at their craft.
And so the hope is that we can open the door to saying, hey, this isn't about who you are, right? It's really about how you work. And so, fit has a couple of components. One is, hey, does the company value just who I am? My ethnicity, my race, by gender, all those things that make me me? And do they appreciate how I work? And those two things are very different. Both are important factors. But I think by separating them, we can sort of have two conversations, there's many smarter minds than mine working in a space I care about in the space of Diversity and Equity and Inclusion, right, really trying to get that sense of belonging around who I am.
And then there's this other side of how we work that we're just trying to elevate as well. And so my hope for everybody is simply this that, hey, there's no perfect company, we all are going to have to fit in on a few factors, right. But if we can be a little bit smarter, about looking at how the company works, and whether or not they value what I value, or appreciate who I am, we're gonna make better choices about where we join, and we make better choices, we are going to do better work. And as we do better work, we're going to solve many of these big problems that we're facing into.
And so I hope that for all of us on any factor, we had the opportunity to have to fit in less and find fit off the bat more and more.
Siobhan: Andre, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing all of your thoughts. If our audience wants to find out more about you and about your book online, where should they go?
Andre: Putting up the website, it's Wrong Fit, Right Fit and there you'll find the book, you'll find a bunch of free assets, articles and PowerPoint presentations, and there's even information to get a hold of me if you want to tell your story about your right fit experience or your wrong fit experience. I'm still collecting them, a couple every week.
Siobhan: Excellent. Thank you so much, Andre, and good luck with the book.
Nidhi: Thanks so much for being here.
Andre: Appreciate it, I had a ball.
Siobhan:If you have a suggestion or a topic for a future conversation, I'm all ears. Please drop me a line at [email protected]. Additionally, if you liked what you heard, post a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you may be listening. Please share Get Reworked with anyone you think might benefit from these types of conversations. Find us at reworked.co. And finally, follow us at Get Reworked on Twitter as well. Thank you again for exploring the revolution of work with me, and I'll see you next time.
