We asked: When organizations filter out candidates for not knowing the unwritten rules, are they selecting for capability, or for the kind of social conditioning that comes with privilege?

Here what’s the analysts had to say.

Al Adamsen, Founder & Managing Director, Adaptive Futures:

When filtering out candidates for not knowing unwritten rules, organizations are definitely not selecting for capability. They might hope to assess likely effectiveness, but depending on where in the selection process this filtering out occurs, such decisions can be clumsy, misleading, unethical, and potentially illegal.

Are they filtering out candidates because they believe that ignoring unwritten rules means someone won't "fit" within the culture – a set of perceived, often subjective social norms? Assessing candidates effectively takes time, and if adequate time isn't allotted to assess certain behaviors, then snap judgements can be made. Furthermore, if "rules" aren't written down and adequately socialized, are they really rules? Expecting people to understand, let alone follow, unwritten expectations can be grossly unfair.

That said, some social norms – unwritten rules – are foundational: chewing with your mouth closed, not interrupting people, not being rude. These are table stakes. In most cases, these behaviors must already be in place to even be considered for a role.

In the end, when recruiters and hiring managers filter by "unwritten rules," are they perpetuating their own conscious and unconscious biases, or acting on a genuine belief that violating these norms harms the individual and the organization? Ultimately, it is best to make conscious decisions based on fairly obtained facts and virtuous intent.

Cheney Hamilton, Research Director | FusionWork Category, Bloor Research International:

Mostly privilege, but the bigger failure is the organisation's own. An unwritten rule is only unwritten because nobody has done the work of writing it down. When a candidate is marked down for not knowing how to "read the room", the organisation is really admitting it can't say what the job needs.

Our research at Bloor found that around 90% of people have a job description that doesn't describe their actual job. The unwritten rules fill that gap, and people who grew up around professional norms fill it without noticing. Everyone else gets called a poor culture fit.

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