Job Applicants' Cultural Fit Can Trump Qualifications

At a recent job interview at Summit Partners, a private equity firm in Boston, an applicant was asked, “If you could pick one person to play you in a movie, who would it be?” An audit staff applicant at New York accounting firm Ernst & Young was asked, “What are the top five cities you want to go to and why?” An online magazine asked an editor, “Where do you vacation in the summer?”

Job interviews are becoming more like first dates. The employment site Glassdoor has collected 285,000 questions asked by hiring managers, and the following four rank among 2012’s 50 most common, though they have little to do with work: What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite website? What’s the last book you read for fun? What makes you uncomfortable? Over the last couple of years, spokesman Scott Dobroski says, the site has found “a significant rise in questions asked about cultural fit.”