The self-motivation aspect you mentioned is also critical. It's these soft questions that reveal so much about a person's character that speak to me as much as or sometimes greater than certifications or degrees do.

It's also why resume screening done by HR drones or worse, AI, are so problematic. Unless I need someone to do an exact thing extremely fast, I'd much prefer a generalist with a sharp mind, proven "gets shit done" attitude and experience, and is motivated to do the right thing.

I agree, "cultural fit" often has biased results.

But "cultural fit" is still necessary but must be defined carefully. If a company doesn't care about culture fit when hiring people, it will become a very bad place to work.

Questions to address when determining cultural fit:

  - How does this person resolve conflict with peers? With managers? 
  - How does this person advocate for change in the workplace? 
  - Does this person share credit, and praise others? 
  - How does this person take responsibility when something bad happens? 
  - How does this person respond to something they heard but don't quite understand? Do they pretend to understand and go on, or stop and clarify at the risk of sounding unknowledgeable? 

Questions that sometimes get confused for cultural fit:

  - Does this person watch the same television shows as me? 
  - Will this person understand the same cultural in-jokes as me? 
  - Did this person go to the same college as me? 
  - Did this person have a similar life journey as me (religion, or where they grew up, etc)?

What you described is what used to be (still is?) called “soft skills”. This is not, from my experience, what people understand by “cultural fit”. At least in NYC it really meant exactly all that you mentioned on your second list.

> How does this person respond to something they heard but don't quite understand? Do they pretend to understand and go on, or stop and clarify at the risk of sounding unknowledgeable?

This. I would additionally also say, how does this person react when shown they misunderstood/misinterpreted something. How do they deal with being wrong about something.

Interesting what you interpret into my words.

With cultural fit I meant that she needs to fit into our diverse team. She should probably not have biases against people coming from different and diverse backgrounds.

She needs to be able to work in a collaborative team setup within our core team as well as be able to integrate into project teams with even more diverse people.

Someone who shows that they would not play well in this team sport while also being self sufficient when necessary would not be a cultural fit in our org.

I dann don't care about the color, gender, age or educational background. On the contrary I enjoy the multibackground people around me. It is inspiring.