Wrong Fit, Right Fit

Very useful read, even if not very pleasant

This book aims to bring to the forefront what most of us already know but hide from ourselves. There are many many reasons for not finding a fit and it is not always about you. Being in a position for 10 years where I have continuously found the “right fit”, this is something that is difficult for me to relate on a personal level. However, I am involved in hiring and onboarding at my organisation (previously, I was directly responsible) and I am able to relate to this from the other side of the table.

This book continuously tries to address this problem from both perspectives: the company's and the individual's. Each chapter begins and ends with a real-life story about how someone worked in a place where they did not fit. Throughout the book, the author provides helpful tips from both perspectives in a given scenario.

Further, the book provides frameworks and tools to help us think about finding fit. The book is mostly written for individuals and so there is an entire chapter dedicated to tools that help individuals. I found this very helpful in my conversations with my reports. The book also includes a couple of chapters that help organisations build a better flow that help people finding fit, right from pre-recruitment stages.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect fit and the book recognizes that as well. Apart from laying the groundwork for what constitutes an adequate fit, the book also has two chapters that describe “buffers” that help find a good working experience even if there is no perfect fit.

While there are many good things about the book, I hated the fact that the book references individuals as “talent”. Every time I read that word, I felt a jolt of displeasure and that broke my flow. Consequently, there are many elements of the language that similarly diminish an individual experience in the same way. While this may appear to be a small thing, it wasn't small for me. I would expect a book about finding fit to use more humanizing language than reducing people to “talent”.