I’m in a fast-growing small startup. In my experience, there’s no such thing as “culture fit” in a 10-person company, because every single hire is going to change that culture.

To me, it doesn’t matter if the candidate “fits in” with today’s culture, it only matters if I will still want to work at the company after the new person is part of its culture.

If only you could actually predict this from interviews!

As is, all you can do is try to put the candidate in job-like scenarios and evaluate specific “culture” attributes like “is open to criticism” or “listens to collaborators” or “codes with a concern for future readers” or “has a positive attitude toward code reviews”. It’s still much easier to disqualify than to endorse on those criteria. Hiring is hard.