Overemphasis on fit

What does this have to do with fit and is there any person who disagrees with this?

I'm experiencing this to the nth degree right now...it's really sad to see. The "fit" thing is crazy when you have a small handful of people (at most) calling the shots with hiring, group placement, etc...Fit for who? The few people the candidate interviewed with? I guess those people just have such a deep-rooted understanding of the "culture" of the group that they can make unilateral decisions as to who is good/not good based on their brief interactions with the person.

I'm sure you can tell this is something I've been thinking about. 

Are you making the distinction between attitude  (positivity, willingness to learn, humility) and fit (who id rather get a beer with)?

My group puts a lot of emphasis on the former, not so much the latter.

Your thinking is too binary, it generally isn't one or the other. Yes, you will have people who fall on either side of the bell curve but for the most part we're all probably fairly decent at our jobs and not complete frat boy douchebags or IB hardos who live for the job.

Having someone on the team that just doesn’t mesh is a huge buzzkill to team morale. Yours truly, a mediocre frat star.

This is clearly not a leading question with the intention of OP seeking self-validation. OP, do you feel like your workplace is not recognizing your superior talents because you are not fitting in with the culture?

Generally, I find that these type of questions are asked by people who ask "bros or hoes?"

Usually they have neither - they're socially awkward and their output is mediocre at best. 

When I think of "fit" I think of someone who is easy to work with and friendly. I don't care if they're a "frat star" or not. Once you've worked with assholes or socially incompetent people you realize how important this is 

I feel like a lot of this is similar to little kids on a playground picking their clique.

I'm an adult and a professional. I can work with anyone and have fun conversations with them. You're into hockey? Sure, cool deal. You're an anime geek or gamer? No problem. We can find stuff to talk about. You like doing ironman on the weekends? That's interesting too. In my opinion, if you're a well-rounded adult, "fit" shouldn't matter that much...

Side note: As mentioned by some others, there can be issues with people who are socially awkward. However, I wouldn't consider that "fit" but instead a lack of a certain SKILL which is necessary for a lot of positions in this business.

Your analogy is way too binary. 

And I’d rather have someone who can be both. You can have the excel monkeys

If I need a robot ill get a robot so no i much prefer someone who is fun to work with even if they cant produce flawless output quickly and can drink like a frat star. You need to get your pipi wet bro 

Good discussion. Personally don’t view fit as “humility”, “willingness to learn”, “takes feedback well.” Those to me are broadly positive characteristics in the vein of technically competent, works hard, has a lot of experience etc. I.e. those are always good. It’s always better to have someone who takes feedback well than not...

I think fit is by definition fungible to the fund itself. It goes beyond these broadly positive characteristics above. 

One of my best analysts was not one that I would typically socialize with and to be frank, I was not supportive of the initial hire because I was concerned about "fit". I was overridden by an MD and he's not only a rockstar employee, but any gap in "fit" is nonexistent . 

Lol I love how binary people treat the fit vs. competency discussion. It's almost as if the mind cannot register that there's a large field of competent people that are likable as well. 

This is a neverending sort of subject because everyone has significant personal experience on the topic. 

In banking, there's really two dichotomous kinds of "fit" hiring: A players hiring A players, and B players hiring C players.

A players hiring A players: when the hiring team is full of very high performers, who have already filtered down a shortlist to candidates who are demonstrably talented and hard-working. The hiring team finds the actual work downright easy, if not at least highly teachable, but knows that the workload is significant and will test a new hire's emotional and physical stamina. They have strong pattern recognition and are effective at sorting out, via on-paper screening and early recruiting events, the wheat from the chaff in a work capability sense. This screening includes identifying talent that isn't coachable. If you can't do that, you're not going to hire good talent anyway. In any case, once you've assessed capabilities, fit is the differentiator. This is when they've got two identical "athletes" in terms of output and coachability, but one of them can talk football and Cape Cod, and the other just doesn't speak until the work is done. Fratty deal teams would hire the former, ascetic/monastic finance purists might prefer the latter. It's not a compromise on talent, but the next differentiator once there is no more marginal benefit to differentiating on talent. 

B players hiring C players: not every group/desk at every bulge bracket in every major city/market is full of top talent. Plenty are downright mediocre; either an also-ran in their market, or because the product itself is elementary. When these folks get overly poetic about fit, watch out. They're aware their group is inherently unattractive to top talent, so they resort to "fit" to address their challenges in both talent acquisition and retention. This box comes in many wrappings, but ultimately speaks to an underlying lack of self confidence. "Our work isn't glamorous; this candidate seems content with being well-paid for reliably chugging thru menial work, which is a good fit" or "two enthusiastic candidates; I can't pronounce this one's name, while this one studies at my non-target" etc. What these groups usually have in common is a previously unsuccessful experience trying to move up the talent ladder - they tried hiring a junior with more raw talent and/or educational achievement than they have, and it didn't work out. Sometimes, they hired a jerk. Other times, they just don't know how to manage talent. Either way, they rationalize it by "fit". It doesn't take long, btw, for these groups to actually tell you about the time they hired some wicked smart kid who was a terrible fit. 

Your group might not fit very neatly into either dichotomous category, but the above is an abstraction. Reality can be a little messy; some teams are in transition from one end of the spectrum to another. But with a little fine-tuning, you should be able to identify which category your group more closely aligns to. Within the constraints of your own personal bias (everyone would like to think they're an A player hired by an A team, for fit). 

The point is there are so many qualified people is you can have both. There is nothing mutually exclusive about being smart and reliable while also being a good fit. 

I guess because of the age of most people here, this topic focused primarily on 'fit' as it concerned junior positions. Whatever your thoughts may be on juniors fitting in with the team, 'fit' becomes increasingly important the more senior you become. I think the importance placed on fit is also inversely proportional to the size of your team. As you become more senior, there are naturally fewer positions available, and people tend to stay longer in their roles, so it matters quite a bit if someone doesn't fit in. With an analyst, they're typically only going to be around for 2-3 years, they aren't likely to interact with clients much, and the directors and MDs aren't going to have to spend a lot of time with them, so 'fit' is less important IMO. At the VP-level or above, however, I think fit matters enormously.

This is probably why you don't see a lot of diversity at the top of firms. The partners at virtually every fund I can think of all tend to go to the same schools (as their other partners), work at the same places, and live in the same communities. Even if they don't think about it in those terms, when they're looking to add to the partnership, they're going to be naturally more predisposed to hiring someone or promoting someone who 'fits' within their mold. If the founders come from hard-scrabble backgrounds and made something of themselves despite the odds, that's what they're likely to value. Or maybe they always wished they could have gone to H/Y/P, so they exclusively surround themselves with people of that pedigree. Or maybe they went to top schools and did well, so that's what they value.

If I were guessing, I'd say that's why there is a lot of inertia in senior executive ranks everywhere as it concerns race and gender. People like other people who are like themselves (especially in the upper echelons of professional services businesses where there is a much higher prevalence of narcissism than in the world at large). What many confuse for racism or sexism is oftentimes narcissism. The whole concept of 'fit' is largely predicated on what you think you need in the personality and interests of another person to get along with them. This way of thinking is narrow and a bit silly, but it is not uncommon. It is hard for most people to be introspective enough to recognize their own biases in the hiring process. This thread centered on juniors mostly, but the problem metastasizes as you get more senior.

Hiring someone who doesn’t fit the culture can actually destroy your entire team. I’ve seen it myself. It might not be as impactful at an analyst level though; making bad fit hires at a management level can lead to awful performance and/or whole groups of staff leaving.

Just FYI there's a middle ground between "nerdy finance try hard" and "meathead frat star." I think what makes finance recruiting unique for college grads is that you need to show that you can be on top of your sh*t and also be able to be a part of a collegial environment. I go to a target and a lot of these meat heads I know never make it into any reputable firms. I'm sure some slip in through the cracks but it's not as black and white as how OP spins it.