Here is a scenario most hiring managers will recognise.

You hire someone with the right qualifications, strong sector experience, impressive references, and a CV that maps almost perfectly to the job description. The interview goes well. They seem like a good fit. You make the offer.

Eighteen months later, the hire has not worked out. Not because they lacked the skills you hired them for. Because something else was not right. The way they made decisions created friction with the team. The culture did not bring out what they were capable of. The manager’s style and theirs were in constant low-level conflict. The chemistry was wrong.

This is the most common version of a bad hire. Not a skills mismatch. A chemistry mismatch. It is exactly why going beyond skills based hiring matters.

The skills-first assumption

The standard recruitment process is built around an assumption: that the right hire is primarily about finding the person whose skills and experience most closely match the role requirements.

This is a reasonable starting point. Skills matter. Experience matters. Sector knowledge matters. A candidate who has done the job before, in a similar context, with demonstrable results, is a lower-risk proposition than one who has not.

But skills are the entry criterion, not the deciding one.

Three quarters of UK employers admit to having hired technically skilled individuals who failed to meet expectations because of weak interpersonal skills or misalignment with company culture, according to research by TestGorilla. That is not a niche problem. That is a widespread, recurring failure at the centre of how most organisations hire.

The skills match is necessary but not sufficient.

What fills the gap: instinct

When the skills criteria are met, most hiring processes shift to something less structured.

Gut feeling. Personal rapport. Whether the candidate felt right in the room. Whether they reminded the interviewer of someone who worked out well previously. Whether they interviewed confidently on the day.

These are not worthless signals. Experienced hiring managers develop genuine pattern recognition over time. But instinct is inconsistent, non-transferable, and subject to well-documented biases. It tends to produce teams of people who look and think like each other, because familiarity is comfortable and comfort is mistaken for fit.

The result: hires that felt right in the interview that did not work in the role. Candidates who interviewed brilliantly but struggled with the actual work. And great candidates who were passed over because they did not fit the image of someone who would succeed.

Chemistry is not cultural fit

It is important to distinguish between chemistry and cultural fit - because cultural fit, as it is commonly used, is a problematic concept.

Cultural fit is often a cover for hiring people who are similar to the existing team - same background, same communication style, same way of seeing the world. At its worst, it is how organisations justify passing over candidates who are different in ways that should not matter, while hiring people who feel comfortable in ways that do not correlate with performance.

Chemistry is different.

Chemistry is about how a specific person will actually operate within a specific team, under specific leadership, in a specific organisational context. It is about working style, decision-making approach, how someone handles ambiguity, how they build trust, how they respond to conflict, and how their values align with what the organisation actually rewards day to day.

A candidate might have poor cultural fit in one organisation and thrive in another. Not because they changed. Because the chemistry was different.

Getting chemistry right consistently is not about instinct. It requires a structured approach to gathering, interpreting, and applying that kind of information.

Why most recruitment processes do not assess it

There are two reasons chemistry is under-assessed in most recruitment processes.

First, it is harder to measure than skills. Skills can be verified. Experience can be reference-checked. Chemistry requires interpretation - and most hiring managers have not been trained to do that consistently or rigorously.

Second, the recruitment industry has historically been organised around filling roles quickly, not filling them well. Volume models reward speed. Contingent recruitment fees are paid on placement, not on the hire still being in post in eighteen months. The incentive structure does not favour slowing down to assess chemistry properly.

The consequence is an industry that is very good at producing candidates who look right and not good enough at producing candidates who are right.

The Chemistry Index™

At 0.618, we built the Chemistry Index™ as our answer to this gap.

It is a structured assessment methodology that evaluates how a candidate will actually function within the specific environment they are being placed into. Not just their skills. Not just their experience. The chemistry.

The Chemistry Index™ looks at:

• Working style. How a candidate organises their work, makes decisions, handles competing priorities, and operates under pressure. Whether that style will complement or conflict with the team they are joining.
• Collaboration patterns. How a candidate builds relationships, manages conflict, gives and receives feedback, and operates across hierarchy. Whether those patterns match what the role and the organisation actually require.
• Values alignment. What a candidate genuinely cares about - in their career, in an organisation, in the way they are led - and whether that aligns with what the organisation actually offers, not just what it says on the website.
• Contextual fit. How the combination of the above translates into this specific role, with this specific team, in this specific moment of the organisation’s development.

The Chemistry Index™ does not replace the skills assessment. It extends it. The output is a more complete picture of a candidate - one that allows hiring managers to make better decisions with better information, consistently.

What this means for hiring outcomes

Organisations that consistently assess chemistry alongside skills make better hires. Not because they are more fortunate. Because they have better information.

Hires who are a genuine chemistry match tend to be more productive sooner, stay in role longer, build stronger teams around them, and are more likely to grow into expanded responsibilities. The compounding effect on organisational performance is significant.

Hiring is always a decision made with incomplete information. The question is how incomplete. The Chemistry Index™ reduces the incompleteness.

Working with 0.618

0.618 specialises in marketing and commercial recruitment. The Chemistry Index™ is part of how we work on every senior search - not as an optional add-on, but as a core part of the process.

If you are looking for a recruitment partner who brings genuine rigour to assessing fit, and who is as interested in whether the hire works long-term as in making the placement, we would welcome a conversation.