It sounds so easy on the surface, in fact those that have done it successfully will tell you that there is no secret formula and everything they would advise you to do you already know – they are merely reminding you to take action.
I had the opportunity to speak with and hear from some of the greatest service minds in the country over the last week and they all say the same thing – with their own variations of course or you would not buy their book – your people and your culture are your most valuable asset.
As I think about our culture I realize that for years we have talked about creating a culture that we care about and that we want to come to work in every day – this to us is all about our people – but I have only recently been able to clearly express what that means to someone on the outside looking in.
In a way Mike and I have been lucky in that we intuitively have been able to build a fun and exciting place to work. We have benefited from low employee turnover in an industry that is knows for employee churn. As a result of this we have also seen incredibly low customer churn numbers during our time in business.
So you may ask, how have we managed to pull this off? Well, we have done nothing more than start with a hyper focus on the people we bring into the organization. I would rather have to work 80 -90 hours a week than to hire someone just to fill a spot. Is this an easy thing to do?? No way. In fact there was a point early in our business when we lost our patience and hired just for the sake of filling a hole, you could say we hired skills rather than cultural fit and we paid for it over the three months it took for this person to move themselves out of the organization. In hindsight (I am always incredibly smart in hindsight) it was one of the best things that happened to us because it both consciously and unconsciously created the commitment we have to only hire the best fit for our organization no matter how long it takes.
Over time we have developed a standard interview process to help us gain an understanding of a person’s heart – what they are all about and what they will bring to the culture – while simultaneously allowing the interviewee to gain an understanding of the type of culture we are. Remember the questions from back in the day when Google and Microsoft used to ask interviewees mid sentence to tell them how many hubcaps there are in NCY? We use similar puzzles and questions to get at the essence of how a person performs under pressure, how deep their critical thinking skills go, and ultimately what kind of people person they are. We have interviewees tell us frequently that our interview is the most fun and challenging they have ever been on, we also have had some that we thought were going to walk out mid interview but hey, at least we knew they were not a fit.
So as we go through this process we look for these four items listed in order of importance:
Cultural fit – can they laugh at themselves, do they take themselves too seriously, do they like to have fun, would you choose get together with this person outside of work
People skills – you have heard me say it over and over again, we are first and foremost a people business we just happen to be really good with this technology stuff
Critical thinking skills – no one can survive in the tech world without having great critical thinking skill
Technical skills – we believe these are least important and the easiest to teach out of the bunch
So next time you are about to hire someone because they know the technology that will round off your team, or they have the exact skill set match that you are looking for, stop for a minute and think about what that person is going to bring in terms of service excellence and cultural fit to your team. And if you need to, step back and exercise patience in order to preserve your culture.
JC
