Hire for Attitude, Train for Skills

I was reading about a health club in Florida that has one of the most interesting hiring processes I've seen in quite a while.  Here's what they do.

1. A 4-page application that's mostly puzzles and games. According to the company, that eliminates most of the lazy people right away.

2. References are checked by phone

3. A group interview with at least 8 candidates and a hiring team from the company (supervisors, department heads, etc.)

4. One-on-ones with the department head. This stage focuses on using creative techniques to determine whether candidates share the company's core values of integrity, willingness to work hard, commitment to helping others, and desire to create the future. One of these techniques is called the chair test:
Extra chairs are left in the interview room. The candidate is sitting in the room when someone comes in and says "They need some chairs next door", then begins picking up the chairs and carrying them out. They continue carrying the chairs out until there are only two left in the room, all the while watching what the candidate does. Does the candidate sit there and watch, or do they offer to help?

5. A high intensity workout on special fitness machines. The goal of this stage is not to see what kind of shape people are in, but to see how they react to adversity and how hard they work.

What I find very interesting about this process is how unconventional it is. In the fitness industry, interviews have traditionally been focused on the candidate demonstrating their own physical fitness and their knowledge of workout best practices. This process, however, focuses almost entirely on attitude - work ethic, previous work experiences, approach to difficult situations, etc. They're interviewing without really interviewing, but they've found some very creative ways to identify whether or not someone is a fit in the organization.

I talk a lot about how attitude is more important than ability when it comes to hiring and developing drivers, so it was very interesting to see a health club taking the same approach, and generating stellar results with it (these guys have a 77% client renewal rate, well above the industry average of 60%, and their margins are just as impressive).  

In trucking, everyone uses pretty much the same hiring process - get a list of previous employers, see how long the driver has been at each one, check their abstract, do a background check, road test, etc. There are some variations in there, but it's all basically the same thing. What would happen if the screening process focused more on a driver's attitude rather than past performance? 

Investors are used to seeing disclaimers stating that "past performance is no guarantee of future returns" on every potential investment, and driver abstracts are exactly the same - just because someone performed well (or poorly) at a previous employer doesn't mean they'll do the same for you. You can do all the road tests and background checks in the world, but if that individual isn't a good corporate fit, or doesn't have the right attitude, nothing else will matter. At the same time, if they do have the right attitude, you can fix the other problems and turn them into a money making machine.

What kinds of out-of-the-box techniques do you use to gauge the attitude of job applicants?

Free Internet

What's the deal with these hotels that don't give you free Internet? They piss me off. I can go stay at Bob's Cheapo Motel and get high speed (likely wireless) Internet included for free in my $49/night room. But if I stay some place that's more middle-of-the-road, then they stick me for 10-18 bucks PER DAY for access. 

Gimme a break. No way does it cost them more than $1/day to deliver that service.

I'm staying at hotel in downtown Dallas right now, about a block away from the convention center where GATS is happening. The hotel dings me for 9.95/day for access, and to make matters worse, it's not even easy to connect! Instead of a basic page that says "if you continue, you'll be charged $X to your room", they make me call the front desk and get an access code, then scroll through their stupidly long usage terms.

I'm sure it won't be long before some major hotel chain starts offering high-speed wireless access in the rooms for free, and advertises that as a key feature. Once that happens, everyone else will have to follow suit and provide decent access for free. That will be a good day.

Until then, I have to pay. :-(

It's bad enough that most of these hotels have ripped out their minibars and now just provide an empty fridge (at best, in most cases, you get bottles of water strategically placed throughout the room, with a hefty price tag attached), but now they're grinding us on Internet as well.

At the least the place I'm staying at has a happy hour and provides complimentary drink tickets. That's pretty cool. And if I use all the drink tickets, it might just distract me from the Internet bill!

The Joy of Stress

I love the Olympics. I'm not a big sports guy but every four years I'm glued to the TV for the duration of the summer games. It sucks for my family.

What I find so fascinating about the Olympics is that the winners are so often NOT the best athletes. Yes, in every Olympics there are some stars that are expected to win, and do - Michael Phelps is one of those people this time - but I think the more interesting stories are the people who aren't favored to win. Or the people that are favored but don't place - how many times have you seen an athlete who "won the world's" the previous year (the announcers love mentioning this) that doesn't even finish in the top 5 at the Olympics?

It happens pretty regularly, especially for Canadian athletes, it seems.  :-(

As I watch this unfolding at each Olympics, I always think about The Joy of Stress - an excellent book written by a guy that used to be my family doctor (until he quit for a lucrative speaking and writing career). In the book, Doc Hanson points out that not all stress is bad and some of it can, in fact, have a very positive effect on us. To underscore that argument, he points out that world records are set at the Olympics (probably the highest stress environment on the planet) and never set during practice (the lowest stress environment). When people are in the right frame of mind, a high stress environment stops being a problem and actually becomes an asset that can lead to record breaking performance.

If any of you are familiar with The Inner Game of Tennis (or the other, companion 'Inner Game' books), you know that the key to performing in these situations in staying focused on the right things. The inner game is what allows top performers to get 'in the moment' and really set things on fire. Not playing the inner game is what causes otherwise qualified performers to cack when the moment of truth arrives. 

So, what's the secret to surviving high stress environments and delivering superhuman performance? Recognize that that stress can lead to exceptional performance, and make sure to stay focused and play the inner game every time. 

Simple, eh? Maybe I should be an Olympic coach. :-)

5 Steps To A Great Employee Handbook

I love Inc. magazine. It's one of the few magazines that I read cover to cover every month, because every issue is packed with great information for the entrepreneurial business. They have sales & marketing tips, finance, business strategy, case studies, and all kinds of other useful info.

One of their regular sections is a pull-out how-to section on policies and best practices. This month, the how-to is focused on creating an employee handbook. They cover the five key components of an employee handbook and outline several "gotchas" to beware of. You can get a copy of the guide here.

Employee handbooks are critical resources for companies of any size, since they help cover your butt on the legal side, and spell out what's expected of everyone in the workplace. The problem is that most small businesses (who can really benefit from them) can never find the time to put them together. And even if you do block off some time to work on one, it's tough to know where to start. This guide fills in a lot of the blanks and gets you started down the right path.

For any of you that don't yet have a handbook, this guide will make it much easier to put together a good one. For any of you that have one already, you can compare it to the best practices in the guide and see if there are areas for improvement.

We put together an employee handbook a few years ago and it's made a huge difference for us. Even so, going through this guide I found a few places where we can tighten up our own policies.

Enjoy!

How Not To Serve Your Customers

I had another run in recently with the cable company. I'm not going to say which cable company, but they've been in the news a lot recently after they botched the rollout of a certain hot-ticket cellphone.

I can't stand this company. 

I'm a customer purely because they offer a service that no one else does. That gives them a competitive advantage, for sure, but not for long. Eventually, the competition will catch up and the second they do, I'll jump ship.

Here's what annoys me about this company. A few years ago, they brought out their Personal Video Recorder (PVR) product. When they first released it, they didn't offer a monthly rental option, so I had to buy it from them (at a cost of 650 bucks). Annoying, but I recognize that there's a price for being an early adopter. Adding insult to injury, though, they also charged me $2/month to access the content that gets recorded on the PVR. Hmm, that sounds shady already doesn't it? Of course, they've structured the package and the contract so it's legal, but it still sounds like a scam. And, since it's a monthly access fee, it goes up. It's now up to $3/month to access content that I've already licensed (through my normal channel package fees), and recorded on a box that I own.

In addition, they've had very few software updates to this PVR since it came out, so the functionality is still pretty rough (especially compared to other PVRs on the market). They've now discontinued this model and they're pushing the newer version, but they have no upgrade path for those of us that purchased the original - if we want a new one we have to chuck our old one and buy/lease the new one at full price.

So that's why I loathe them (there's more, but that gives you a taste of it). Every time I call them, I hear the familiar disclaimer that my call may be monitored or recorded for training purposes. And every time I talk to an agent there, I make a point of telling them how much I loathe their company and its policies. I even ask them to note it in my account. The phone reps, of course, have no idea how to respond to this and invariably sit there in stunned silence.

This has probably happened a dozen times over the last few years, and not once has a rep passed me to a supervisor for discussion. Not once has a customer service person contacted me to inquire about my dissatisfaction or attempted to resolve my issues. They do their best to completely ignore my dissatisfaction, all the while continuing to hound me to buy additional services from them. Sure, they talk in public about how much they value their customers, but their actions tell a very different story.

Now, I'm not expecting them to change their policies just for me. They're a business and they have to make money like every other business. Of course, solving my problem would cost them very little and generate far more goodwill, but they're a public company and they're obviously focused on short term results rather than long term value.

To me, that's a great example of how NOT to treat your customers. Sure, they've got my business right now because of a competitive advantage, but they won't have it forever. If their business model is "suck in customers with shiny products then treat them like crap", they've got it down, but that business model puts them squarely into the same category as pimps and crack dealers.

In fact, every time I'm forced to deal with this company, it causes me to re-examine our customer service policies. My goal is to ensure that we never do anything that remotely resembles them. I don't think there's much chance of that, but still, I think about it. I can't imagine any customer ever calling up and saying "please make a note that I can't stand your company and its policies" but I know that I wouldn't sleep until their issues were resolved.

I guess these clowns at the cable company are doing me a favor, then, by forcing that ongoing review of our policies. I have a feeling that I won't get around to thanking them, though.