Recruitment, Part 3: Interviewing

Eurgh, interviews. I honestly think I prefer being interviewed than interviewing sometimes. It is so tough to work out if the answers you are being given resemble the truth and whether the questions you are asking are really getting to the heart of the matter. Of course, often you know straight away that someone isn’t a fit, but it’s when you’re at round two and have a handful of potential candidates that I just wish I had a crystal ball.

There are a few solutions.

Firstly, now you have your ‘essentials’ list narrowed down, form some questions that ask for examples of those behaviours. Instead of asking, ‘are you able to give honest feedback, even to your manager?’, ask ‘can you give me an example of a time when you’ve given honest feedback to your manager even though you knew they didn’t want to hear it?’. Make it clear that the interviewee has as much time to answer these questions as they’d like, and you can even come back to them. After all, you want a real answer to the question, not to know whether or not they have an indexed memory.

Secondly, try to organize the interviews so that afterwards, several interviewees are able to mingle with you and your employees over a cup of tea and biscuits. The candidates will get a chance to get more of a feel for the business but your employees will also get a chance to pick up on any red flags. It’s incredible how much people will say, even to the person who just interviewed them, with a cup of tea and a biscuit in their hand when they think the interview is over.

Lastly, when you think you have made a decision, use their referees. When you get their previous manager or colleague on the phone, tell them you are a small business looking to invest a lot of time and money into [successful candidate] and you would really appreciate it if they could answer some questions. Then ask them a few of the same questions you asked the candidate. Even down to examples of the behaviour whenever possible. If they don’t have time, ask when would be a better time to call back, because you need to hear about their experience with the candidate.

PS. If you've got any magical interview questions that you have used or had used on you in the past, please don't be a dick and keep them to yourself: comment below. 

Recruitment, Part 2: Who are you really hunting?

You probably have a pretty clear idea in mind of the type of person you’d like to employ and the skills you’d like them to bring to the table. Nevertheless, please do a little planning before launching into The Hunt.

Ask your other employees or colleagues who they think the business needs – especially those who will be working alongside the successful applicant. You’re looking for them to brainstorm both the perfect traits and skills. Even in the unlikely event that they don’t come up with any new ideas, getting people involved in the process and respecting their opinions is just one more way to get people to take responsibility for the culture of where they work.

Next, try to list some personality traits that neither you nor your team is strong in. You probably envision your perfect candidate to be someone who fits into the team because they are very similar to you and your staff. However, the perfect candidate is probably someone who compliments the team rather than fitting in because they have the same core values but have strengths where you currently have weaknesses. For example, maybe your existing team is great at attention to detail so someone with excellent ‘big picture’ skills would be an interesting addition. Diversity takes a little more management but in the long term brings about a robust and dynamic business.

Draft up your initial ideas, your colleagues ideas, and those complimentary traits into a list of ‘desirable’ and ‘essential’ criteria. Standard practice. Now have a play with that list and pretend someone has all the desirables but none of the essentials, and another candidate is the opposite. Technically the candidate with all the essentials but none of the desirables should be the more employable, but are they? Or is there something in your essentials list that, really truly, isn’t essential? Is something on your desirable list, like the right attitude, actually an essential? Getting this list right by using your vision for your culture and knowing your weaknesses will really help attract the right candidates. What if you had ‘degree in events’ on your essentials list and were discouraging experienced candidates? Or even un-experienced ones who had the energy and creativity your already very experienced team needed? You’d be missing out on new ideas and paying a lower salary because you assumed a degree was what your business needed. Or what if ‘full-time’ work was assumed when really, for the right person, you could manage 9am-3pm school hours?

My point is: if you have your cultural values worked out and adhere to them, then you can and should think outside the box with other aspects of recruitment. 

An Interview with 2773

I don’t know if you’ve heard the rumour but a friend of a friend of a friend heard that one of the staff at Glenbrook’s 2773 café has a tattoo of the cafes logo. LET ME REPEAT THAT: one of the staff had a fork and spoon and the numbers 2773 permanently and painfully needled ONTO THEIR BODY. Clearly, the owner of 2773 was the person I needed to interview about the elements of culture that I’ve just covered in Culture 101.

Introducing Shane Simpson. Café 2773 is actually his fourth café venture and whether you’re a local hardcore Jazz Apple fan or a new convert to 2773, there’s no denying the café has been permanently busy since opening a year ago. So, in his own words;

“I’d describe our culture as positive. We try to empower our people in two ways. Firstly, we allow them to exercise their personality. Customers buy that; they connect with our staff when they are allowed to be themselves. We don’t want to make everyone the same and we want to see what they can bring to the table. It also means our staff aren’t confected when they’re serving. Secondly, we try to encourage them to make their own decisions; we have strict guidelines but we try to give people ability to make decisions.

“I think what builds a culture is people have to like you, their boss. They have to care, so you need to care about and know about their lives too.

“Hospitality is notorious for being a crap place to work with cranky pricks in the kitchen kicking breadbaskets about. It’s a hard job. If we all won Lotto tomorrow I think the last place you'd find us is at work but until that happens I think it important to make the workplace fun to be around, or at the very least, pleasant.

“In terms of processes that we have in place to keep the positive culture, I think doing little things for your staff that they aren’t expecting goes a long way. Say, if they like a certain cuisine buy them some vouchers for a meal out there. If you build your key players and look after them then they become your ambassadors.

“Also, this could come across as ruthless but hire carefully and fire quickly. If we think a staff member is precarious or seems likely to misrepresent us or let us or the team down, we’ve learnt from experience and we don’t wait for that to happen. When I get complimented on our staff, you feel like saying, its no coincidence. When you open, 60% of the ones you start with might not be right but you’ll get there.”

Oh, and the rumour about a staff member with a tattoo of the logo?

“We’ve got two! They got them together. One of them has left, Amanda; but she’ll be back, she’s pretty flighty and moves around a bit.  Any staff who leave and want to come back we welcome back with open arms. We’ve had some staff with us for seven years, and others who have left two or three times for other work and come back to us.”*

There was something Shane didn’t say that only occurred to me after our chat. He might not even be aware of it. As far as I can tell, he is living the culture he wants 2773 to have. Notice how his personality is front and centre? I’d never met Shane before but he was honest, authentic and a little rough around the edge, and exactly as he said, “customers buy that”. I did.

*And folks, I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in hospitality, but seven years is im-press-ive. Hey, it’s impressive for most employers nowadays. 

Wardrobe Daydreams

I want these. I really want them. I haven't got like this over a pair of shoes since I was in my teens. How perfect are they for the Australian autumn? Sod it, I don't care if they are perfect for the season or not. Just look at them. Plus, I want all my friends to own them so we can hang out in the foyer of a budget hotel, like this...

Available from Olive Thomas shoes in Tel Aviv, see here.

Recruitment, Part 1: The Hunt

Finding new staff is really, really difficult. It's difficult for multinational corporations with entire HR departments, it's difficult for long-standing businesses, it's difficult for start-ups, it's difficult for Bill Gates. Everyone knows that people are a key factor in success but it's easier said than done when that means attracting the right person, realising they are the right person amongst all the candidates, and then managing their expectations to get them off to the right start. 

How do you start the hunt? The culture of your organisation that I've spent the past five weeks banging on about is a good starting point: is your business somewhere with an attractive personality, GSOH, who likes walks on the beach? Because if you've grown an authentic and unique culture then over time I'll wager you'll have applicants come to you.

But you already know how important I think culture is and even if you have it, when you do decide that you can't manage everything in your business yourself and need to take the scary plunge of employing someone, start by brainstorming the places your perfect employee might hang out. Instead of paying Seek or CareerOne for a pretty generic ad, first ask yourself:

• Where do they shop? Where do they eat out?
• What do they like to do on their days off? 
• How do they like to portray themselves?
• What are their habits? 

You may think this is all irrelevant and will narrow your field so completely that you'll miss most of your potential candidates but what you are really doing is increasing your efficiency and sticking to your cultural values. Say you need to hire a new estate agent for your team, for example: are you a 'family values' business or are you aiming for a swanky, boutique feel? For the first, you might put up posters in the local park or family-friendly cafe, for the latter you might ask to leave brochures in a fashionable clothing store. 

Once you've spent at least 20 minutes scribbling ideas on an A4 piece of paper, see if any of these resources might be a way to reach out to that perfect candidate:

• Ask your employees if they know anyone, or their friends know anyone, or their kids know anyone. If each employee roughly knows a few hundred people in the area and you have more than one employee, then friends' of their friends would be a circle of thousands of potential referees. Simple but surprisingly underutilized,
• Gumtree - for trades or uni student roles in particular, usually so cheap that it's always worthwhile,
• Local media - not TV, I'm talking school or church newsletters, cafe or gym bulletin boards, even a local market stall,
• Client email update or your business' Facebook page - even if you don't get any referrals, phrased correctly, it's an advert of your business itself because the traits you are looking for should be why your customers use you, 
• School career advisor - if you need a weekend casual or junior, I strongly recommend contacting the local schools to see if you can spend 5 minutes in one of their assemblies outlining why your business rocks and what type of stella employee you are after. You'll be surprised how enthusiastic most schools are, especially near the end of a school year. 
• Consider holding a free seminar or open evening and inviting local professionals to network, mingle, have a beer, and obviously at some point in the evening make sure it's clear (but not tacky) that you have a position to fill. Please make sure the evening reflects your business: there's no point creating an illusion and attracting the wrong sort of people, 
• Facebook! I highly recommend that you have a play with Facebook ad manager (use the boosted post function) and search for your perfect candidate using their extremely fine-tunable parameters. It's scary how much information they have on people, you may as well use it to your advantage. And you can set the budget as low as you like. 

Above all, be creative. It might take more leg work but an ad online can set you back $300 and won't show your business' personality half as well. 

Of course, all this goes hand in hand with knowing what type of employee you want, so three guesses what I'm writing about next week?

PS. If you are still tempted by a regular old online ad, remember: businesses generally get the staff they deserve. If you think you deserve brilliant, committed and sincere staff then start by being brilliant, committed and sincere in your hiring process. 

Cultivating Culture, Part 5: Maintaining the change

*

Some of the examples of processes I mentioned last week are what can be called external energy. They are great as reminders for how you want your business to run and I know they will help your staff understand the direction you want your business or team to head in.

For the long run, be aware that consistency is the tough part. The trick is to use both internal and external energy to keep moving in the right direction. This is why the questions at the start of this mini-series were so key: knowing who you are and what makes you tick, the internal energy, is so much more driving over time. Motivation can’t be relied upon forever, but owning something as part of your identity will stay with you. 

So for the internal energy, after the first few months of moving towards your new culture, you need to revisit some of the sort of questions you and your team asked at the start:

• What makes us stand out?
• What environment are we trying to create?
• How do we want your customers to feel when they leave?
• What are you committed to? What would you defend?
• How does your personal role at work relate to all that?
  

I'm not saying you jump your staff with revisiting these all at once but getting round to one of these questions in a casual way at the tea station or in one-to-ones gives your staff the opportunity to own the culture and add to it. If the idea is making you uncomfortable, just think of it like this: they want to be happy at work and be a part of something, so by asking a sincere question and genuinely listening to them, you are helping both the culture and your employee grow. If you go in with the right attitude of really wanting to hear what they have to say, it’ll come across and not set any BS detectors off. Plus, going in with the intention of being helpful will most likely also create some new ideas for processes to help the team continue the cycle.

You’ll obviously also need to have conversations like this with yourself too. Mentors are fantastic, as are journals. External prompts can be of use here - remember the trick is to use both in tandem. So think post-its on your mirror, pod-casts, TED talks, diary reminders, new workplace processes, a creative brainstorming session with your team. Whatever works for you. If you can set up external processes to prompt you into being grateful for what you have and proud of where you are going then you’ll maintain your internal energy.

One of the best processes I’ve heard a business owner put in place was this: every day before he got out of his car and entered his business, he turned off the engine, closed his eyes, and envisioned how he wanted that business to feel. His opinion was that even if he was running late, if he walked in with the exact attitude and presence that he wanted his employees to emulate then that was far more valuable than saving two minutes. It really struck me with its simplicity because who we are when we get out of the car is so rarely who we want to be when we walk in to work. And yet it’s such a perfect, private space to switch off for a minute and visualize how we want our day to go.  

Try it next time you turn the car off.

Who are you? Where are you going?

*Available to buy here.

The Tribe

I'm in a real life chicken and egg situation. 

I want to get started with my Tribe idea (see here to catch up) but I keep oscillating between thinking I need the Tribe first and then thinking I need the businesses first.* 

In my head I can picture both perfectly. The Tribe are made up of switched-on, stylish, ethically conscious women who, although they value buying local/organic/fair-trade, also hate the smell of hemp and would never own a dream catcher. 

The businesses who I know are out there that I want to involve are principled, value quality, and have a strong tie to the local area. 

So the conclusion I think I'm coming to is that my Facebook page (here) is the best place to scope a bit of a guesstimate of support. 

If you know anyone who you think fits either of the bills above, please share this with them. To be a receiver they need to be based in Blaxland, Glenbrook or Mt Riverview for my hand-delivery idea to work out. 

*The other thing I can't stop thinking about is the beautiful brown paper packaging I would use for the parcels but we'll leave that for another time. Ok, FINE, IF YOU INSIST, this is one idea I love the simplicity of: