How do job applicants evaluate company culture?

Note: This post was updated in February 2023 with new research.

Company culture is an important consideration for job seekers.

In February 2023, I surveyed more than 1,200 employees. A whopping 95 percent said they consider a company’s culture before applying for a job.

Even after people apply, culture remains an important consideration. My research shows that 43 percent of employees have turned down a job offer because the company had a poor culture.

Culture is also a reason existing employees choose to stay or go, with 64 percent of employees indicating they’ve left a company due to the culture. (You can see that research here.)

So how exactly do job applicants evaluate your company's culture?

I posed that question on LinkedIn and got a lot of great responses. Here's a summary, along with some commentary of my own.

What is company culture?

Culture is defined as how people in an organization think and act. To job applicants, this often boils down to “What’s it like to work here?”

This might include a few things:

  • What are general norms and expectations for the workplace?

  • How do coworkers treat each other?

  • Are employees proud to work for the company?

  • How are senior leaders viewed by employees?

  • What is a typical workday like?

Every organization has its own unique qualities. Candidates want to know if they can see themselves working for your company and if they’ll enjoy it.

Applicants do their research

Many job applicants do a lot of research before applying for a job with your company.

The employer review site, Glassdoor, is one popular resource. It contains anonymous reviews and ratings of thousands of companies.

Many also use LinkedIn extensively.

"I’ll review who the leaders are, Google them, find them on LinkedIn, [and] review their profiles," wrote Thomas Velasquez. "If I know someone, I will reach out and see if I can get an informational interview."

Aida Soleimani takes a similar approach. "It’s been helpful to reach out to employees on LinkedIn not involved in the interview process and ask them what they like or dislike about the company, what they would change and if they have thought about leaving the company. Sometimes it also helps to reach out to ex-employees and ask similar questions."

"One thing I use is the company’s hiring trends," wrote Greg Freeman. LinkedIn Premium users can quickly access information such as the company's growth rate and the average tenure of employees.

Some, like Jessica Hollo, check a company's social media accounts. "What does the company feel is important enough to portray to a wider audience?"

"I analyze the texts & overall narration on the website (mission, values, key concepts etc) & in the job description," wrote Anastasia Zarusskaia. "The language usually speaks for itself."

One way to make it easier for applicants to research your company culture is to include a culture page on your website. (See examples in this post.)

The interview process is important

Applicants evaluate the interview process itself to get a sense of an organization's culture. Does the organization seem to value them and their time, or are they treated poorly?

Multiple interview rounds can be a red flag, especially for applicants with jobs, school, childcare, and other responsibilities that must be juggled to accommodate several days of interviewing.

One-way video interviews are another turnoff. Some companies try to be more efficient by asking applicants to record short videos of themselves answering screening questions, but many candidates report having a bad experience.

The interview setting is also important.

I've seen job interviews happen at Starbucks and other public places, where the applicant is asked to respond to personal questions within earshot of other customers. It can be a jarring experience.

Applicants also assess the interviewer and other employees they meet.

"I try to make my impression from how [the] interviewing process is going," wrote Samer Mcshat. "I do my assessment usually when the interviewer gives me space to ask questions. That was always useful."

"I've asked to meet different team members across the company," added Marco Yim.

Many applicants are interviewing with multiple employers, and it’s a competitive process. You can stand out by making the interview process enjoyable, informative, and easy for applicants.

Interviewing the interviewer

Candidates frequently turn the tables on recruiters and hiring managers to interview them.

"How interviewers respond to questions about work/life balance, diversity, and salary negotiations during the interview says a lot about company culture," explained Jasonda Desmond. "I also like to talk to other people in the team. More often than not I am looking at how they react to questions or answers, in addition to what they say."

Brad Langebartels also looks for how people discuss the culture. He prepares questions ahead of time and then asks follow-up questions to learn more about the culture and check for inconsistencies. "If interviewer groups can demonstrate how their communicated vision is reflected in their public reputation and work culture, you will have one important factor to consider."

"One should also enquire about the team as you will eventually work with the team at the org," wrote Garvit Arora. "[The] company might have a people-first culture but as an employee it is important to know if that culture drills down to individual teams as well."

Interviewers can standout by proactively discussing culture.

“During interviews I speak about the company and department culture,” wrote Katrina Garcia. “I believe by opening the discussion proves we care about work/life balance, communication, and that we want to be a good fit for them equally as we want them for us.“

Conclusion

Culture is vitally important to job applicants, especially in a tight job market.

Make it easy for candidates to assess the company culture. Encourage people to do their research, share candid information about what it's like to work in your company, and make other employees readily available.

It's a bad idea to try to hide reality. "It's one of those intangible concepts that's really hard to fake comprehensively," wrote Scott Ontiveroz.

Share the real culture, warts and all. This will help attract employees who really want to work in your company, while discouraging candidates who might be short-timers anyway.

You can use this guide to hiring for culture fit for more ideas or grab my ideal candidate profile worksheet.

How realistic job previews can increase retention

The job description had been wrong for two years.

That's what the IT service manager discovered when he checked with human resources. He was trying to find a reason why so many new hires were ill-prepared for the job they were hired to do.

And why they often left so quickly.

The manager learned that human resources recruited new hires using a job description meant for the customer service contact center. By contrast, the manager led an internal team that provided technical IT support to internal customers.

While extreme, this isn't an unusual story.

Companies are struggling to hire and retain employees in contact centers, restaurants, retail, hotels, and other customer service roles. One of the many causes is a broken hiring process that features unrealistic promises about the job employees are being hired to do.

They're promised Disneyland and arrive to find Walley World instead.

There's a simple fix to this problem. Give applicants a realistic job preview so they know exactly what to expect if they get hired.

A gap between recruitment and reality

Job previews help applicants understand what they're being hired to do. A realistic job preview sets clear expectations, while a poor preview can result in unexpected surprises.

It's a common problem.

An informal LinkedIn survey revealed that just 48 percent of new customer service employees felt the actual job was a close match with what they had been told during the interview process.

Another informal survey of Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers showed a similar trend. More than 45 percent said their last new job was significantly different than what they had been told during the interviewing process.

Many reported working with far more upset customers than they had anticipated. 


The impact of unrealistic job previews

Businesses are struggling to attract and retain employees. A Forbes analysis of employment data showed that industries such as leisure and hospitality have been hit the hardest.

Customer service leaders tell me they've seen a dramatic increasing in ghosting. This happens when an employee just stops showing up and won't return calls, texts, or emails.

It often happens after just a few days on the job. Unrealistic job previews are partly to blame.

A failure to set clear expectations with job candidates creates a host of problems when those employees are eventually hired.

  • Selection: poor hiring choices are easily made.

  • Retention: new hires quit more often.

  • Performance: employees that do remain tend to perform poorly.

A 2020 study of contact center agents by Benchmark Portal revealed that job dissatisfaction increased by 49 percent once employees had been on the job for more than three months.

Three months matches the time a typical contact center takes to fully onboard new agents. This includes orientations, new hire training, and nesting where agents are given extra assistance to do their jobs.

All of this can be avoided if new hires are given a realistic job preview, so they can make informed choices about the job before they accept an employment offer.


How to create a realistic job preview

A realistic job preview gives applicants are clear view of the job they are asked to do. It helps them understand the work they'll be doing and weigh the good elements with the bad.

Contact center consultant, Andrew Gilliam, has asked applicants to listen to recorded customer calls and think of the next question to ask the customer. It helps simulate the actual job while also testing candidates' listening and critical thinking skills.

Hollie Baranick often hires teenagers to work at Ruby Falls, a popular tourist attraction in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Baranick gives anyone under 18 a pamphlet to take home to their parents that outlines important aspects such as attendance policies and time off requests. "It really helps prevent the whole 'Sorry my mom says I have to go to my uncle’s tomorrow so I can’t come in to work,'" explained Baranick. The pamphlet balances out the policies by also outlining some of the job's perks.

Here are a few other ideas to create realistic job previews:

  • Arrange for candidates to meet with current employees.

  • Create an unglamorous video showing employees doing the job.

  • Have applicants shadow employees for an hour.

Keep in mind that a good job preview should help attract the right candidates while convincing the wrong candidates to opt out of the selection process.

I once shadowed an employee when I applied for a management trainee position at rental car company. The experience helped me realize the position involved long hours for relatively low pay, so I passed on the job offer.


Conclusion

In a competitive hiring market, it's natural to want to sell new hires on all the virtues of your company. Just be sure to sell the real experience.

The goal is to find people who will love working for your company, warts and all. You want new hires who truly enjoy the job they are asked to do.

False promises can only hurt that effort, so it's best to be honest up front.

Here’s a resource portal with even more best practices for hiring great employees. Once you do make an offer, my Running Company Onboarding course on LinkedIn Learning can help you create a great new hire experience.

Why one-way video interviews are a bad way to hire

There's a new hiring tool on the rise, and candidates aren't happy.

Hiring managers are increasingly using asynchronous video interviews to screen job applicants. These are one-way interviews where candidates are given a short time to record their answers to pre-set interview questions.

Recruiters then review the videos at a later time.

According to this article from CBC, video interview platforms such as HireVue, Knockri, and VidCruiter saw dramatic increases in volume during 2020. Employers are rapidly adopting this technique.

One-way video promises efficiency and cost savings for employers, but there is also a huge downside that many fail to consider.

One-way video interviews might be turning away top talent.

A woman at a computer looks at the camera and gives a thumbs down signal.

How do one-way video interviews help employers?

One-way video interviews promise to save recruiters time, speed up the selection process, and reduce biases against qualified applicants.

In a typical recruiting process, qualified candidates are selected from the initial applicant pool. These candidates then go through a short pre-screen interview with a recruiter. The goal is to narrow down the field and identify the top candidates to bring in for formal interviews.

It can take a lot of time for the recruiter to coordinate schedules with applicants and conduct each phone interview.

One-way video interviews eliminate this time-consuming step, allowing multiple applicants to quickly complete this phase of the selection process on their own time. Video interviews also have the potential to create a fairer, more consistent process since each candidate responds to exactly the same questions.

What do candidates say about one-way video interviews?

I posted the question on LinkedIn and received quite a few responses. You can read the full conversation here.

Many people said they would not consider a company that required a one-way video interview.

"That right there shows me that I wouldn't want to work for that company," said Stephanie Persic, a customer service representative. "They can't even take the time to meet with me one-on-one so that we can gauge each other."

"Hell no," said Mark-Allen Perry, a technical project manager.

"When I was going through the interview process, I skipped over any companies that sent me these one-way video interviews," added Nick Poetsch, a project manager. "It's very impersonal."

Others reported a frustrating and awkward experience.

"It was appallingly managed and the worst interview experience I've ever had," said Fiona Barker, a change management leader. Barker explained that the request for a video interview came with no instructions on how to use the system and there wasn't an opportunity to practice or re-record answers if something went wrong.

"I did email the company with feedback on the process," said Barker. "They didn't bother to reply."

Lilly Obina, a senior project leader, described a stressful and time-consuming process. "You have to find a quiet room, look for lights especially for dark skinned folks like me. You need a great device to tape so it produces good quality video which was very expensive for me considering every penny counts when you have no job. Answering the questions are very stressful because you have to think of your answer, think of the short time you have and when recording around other people who are helping out to hold camera and lighting, you end up somehow disorganized."

Vanessa Penick, an alumni relations specialist, found it difficult to be authentic. "It was awkward and I was focused too much on what I looked like and how I sounded, vs really trying to connect with a person, be myself, and answer truthfully. I am a very personable person. How can you determine that with a one-way interview?"

Jasonda Desmond, an instructional designer, wrote that the experience was so bad that she would likely not apply to companies in the future that used one-way interviews. "I've done one of these as an interviewee and I hated it. It took me 2x the time to record as it would have to do the interview live. Some of the questions were vague and I couldn't ask for clarification."

The employee selection process is a reflection of your company's culture. While one-way interviews might save a little time, it's clear that many applicants are getting a strong negative impression from their experience.

Any cost savings is negated if you lose out on highly qualified candidates who won’t work for your company.

What are alternatives to one-way video interviews?

There are a few things companies can do to recruit more efficiently while maintaining a positive impression with applicants.

1. Create an ideal candidate profile

You can save a lot of time by creating an ideal candidate profile. This tool helps you fine-tune the qualifications you're looking for in a candidate.

Many companies rely on outdated selection criteria or biased assessments to vet candidates. The unfortunate result is many great candidates are excluded while too many unqualified applicants make it to the next round of interviews.

An ideal candidate profile can fix this by homing in on the qualifications successful candidates actually need. The process includes eliminating unnecessary qualifications and validating the criteria to make sure the model is accurate.

One client had a critical position open for months and struggled to find the right person. After creating an ideal candidate profile, they found an amazing hire in just a few days!

2. Develop consistent interview questions

Inconsistent, irrelevant, or inappropriate interview questions can hurt your selection process whether you're using a live recruiter or one-way video.

Some recruiters doggedly believe they can assess an applicant’s fit by having an informal conversation. The opposite is true. Research shows companies would make better hires if they skipped the interview altogether rather than rely on informal conversations.

Interviews can still play an important role in the selection process, but you must ask a consistent set of carefully-designed questions. The good news is you can quickly develop better interview questions with a few simple steps.

3. Focus on fit over skills

Many of the skills that employees need on the job are trainable. Finding the right fit with your workplace culture is the real challenge.

There are some potential pitfalls here. Without the appropriate safeguards, trying to hire for culture fit can lead to lower quality candidates and even illegal discrimination.

Do this right, and you'll attract a diverse group of amazing employees. Just follow this step-by-step guide.

Conclusion

A good interview process should help you attract highly-qualified employees.

Julianne Bennett, a public relations intern, passed on several companies that required one-way video interviews. "I ended up landing an opportunity with an in-person interview. For me, the energy of an in-person interview can't be beat by software."

How to Avoid Hiring Toxic Employees

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Larissa (not her real name) was partying with coworkers and subordinates outside of work. There was a lot of drinking and things got out of hand. People started arguing and a fight broke out.

Intoxication impaired Larissa's judgement. She added fuel to the fire by choosing sides and gossiping.

There was fallout the next day at work. Employees were upset about the altercation and angry at Larissa for her role in it. After all, Larissa was a manager and someone people expected to be a voice of reason.

Her boss quickly got wind of the story and had to investigate.

Larissa admitted her role in the fracas, but didn't accept responsibility. She felt that what she did on her own time was her own business, without understanding that a manager drinking with employees can still be considered a work function.

Her boss subsequently learned that Larissa had created issues at her last job. None of that surfaced during the interview process because Larissa's references had lied about her qualifications and conduct.

Avoiding toxic employees like Larissa can be tricky. In a surprising revelation, many common hiring practices actually attract toxic workers. Here's how to avoid that.

Recruiter evaluating puzzle pieces representing employees. One piece clearly does not fit.

How common are toxic employees?

Michael Housman and Dylan Minor conducted a study of toxic employees in 2015. They reviewed 58,542 customer service employees from multiple companies and found that 1 in 20 were fired for toxic behavior within their first year of employment.

Toxic behavior is defined in the study as "an egregious violation of company policy. Examples include sexual harassment, workplace violence, falsifying documents, fraud, and general workplace misconduct."

It makes sense to avoid hiring toxic people, but that's easier said than done. Larissa got hired by getting references to lie on her behalf and falsifying her resume (more on that in a moment). 

So how can you spot a potentially toxic employee? The study highlighted three specific factors to look for. 

How can you screen out toxic people?

The study identified three prominent risk factors for toxic behavior:

  • Overconfidence

  • Self-regarding

  • Rule-orientation

Let's take a closer look at each one, starting with overconfidence. 

Overconfidence

These are employees who believe they're awesome, even when they're not. 

Study participants were asked during the interview process to estimate their level of computer skills. The applicants were later given a skill assessment to determine their actual skill level.

A whopping 34 percent were overconfident, with the skill test revealing they were less skillful than they had claimed. These employees were 15 percent more likely to be terminated for toxic behavior than the rest.

I've run my own experiments that reveal customer service employees consistently overrate their abilities. These overconfident employees are less likely to accept feedback, learn new skills, or improve their performance because they don't believe they need to.

One of the warning signs Larissa's boss missed during the initial interview process was Larissa lied on her resume. She overstated her qualifications and was overly confident about her ability to do the job. 

You can avoid hiring overconfident employees by having them demonstrate their abilities during the selection process whenever possible. This might include a computer test or asking them to write a sample customer email.

Some abilities, like defusing an angry customer, are more difficult to test in an interview. One solution is to ask candidates to relate a specific experience rather than respond to a hypothetical situation. So you might ask, "What happened the last time you had to defuse an angry customer?"

Janis Whitaker's excellent book, Interviewing by Example, provides lots of great examples and ideas for crafting these types of interview questions.

Self-Regarding

Pop quiz. What type of person do you think is generally better at customer service?

  1. Someone who is self-centered

  2. Someone who cares deeply about others

If you answered "someone who cares about others," you're right. The study found that self-centered, or self-regarding, employees were 22 percent more likely to be terminated for toxic behavior.

Recall that Larissa focused on her desire to party and have a good time with friends, rather than her responsibility to be a good role-model when socializing with subordinates outside of work.

Many customer service leaders make the mistake of designing a selection process that attracts people who are more self-regarding.

  • Including self-centered terms like "rockstar" or "superstar" in the job posting.

  • Promoting perks like games, incentives, and prizes for top performers.

  • Selling candidates on advancement opportunities, rather than the job itself.

The way to fix this issue is by emphasizing teamwork and company culture in the interview process. Here are just a few ways to do this:

  • Highlight culture on your career page, such as this one from Squarespace.

  • Use team-focused descriptions in job postings.

  • Screen candidates for culture fit using this guide.

Above all, do away with contests, games, and prizes that promote self-regarding behavior. There's extensive research that proves incentives can crush an employee's motivation to do the right thing.

Rule-Orientation

Job applicants in the study were asked to decide which of two statements most applies to them.

  1. I believe rules are made to be followed.

  2. Sometimes it's necessary to break the rules to accomplish something.

The surprising twist is people who chose "I believe rules are made to be followed" were 25 percent more likely to be fired for toxic behavior. It seems that someone stating they are a rule-abider doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually abide.

Customer service managers with a lot of toxic employees tend to be overly focused on rules.

  • Attendance policies

  • Dress codes

  • Conduct policies, such as the use of personal cell phones

The solution to this challenge can be counterintuitive. Customer-focused leaders spend less time on rules (what not to do), and more time reinforcing positive behaviors (what to do).

For example, rather than reviewing the attendance policy with an applicant, a customer-focused leader might emphasize why an employee might want to come to work every day. Perhaps the company offers fun and challenging work, has a compelling customer service vision, and creates an environment where coworkers genuinely trust and support each other.

Take Action

Hiring good, non-toxic employees is difficult.

When I wrote about customer-focused companies in The Service Culture Handbook, the chapter on hiring was the most difficult to write. There were too few companies that did a fantastic job recruiting the right people.

You can make strides by avoiding overconfident, self-regarding, and rule-oriented job applicants. I've also created this hiring resource page to give you more tools and information.

Beware of Snake Oil and Hiring Assessments

One question I'm often asked is what hiring assessments do I recommend for screening customer service employees. 

I'm always cautious about these, as some assessment vendors seem like the modern-day equivalent of a snake oil salesperson. "It will cure anything," they say, even though it actually won't.

It can be hard to tell the difference between a good and bad assessment. Here's my advice if you're thinking of going down this path.

Searching for job candidates who all like the same.

My "Ah-Ha" Moment

Years ago, my role included developing leaders for the company I worked for. We used two pre-hire assessments from a well-known vendor. One assessed cognitive ability and the other was a personality assessment.

Like many assessments, this one came with pre-determined "standards" that were supposed to aid our hiring decisions. Candidates whose assessment results fit within a range determined by the vendor were considered to be ideal.

The company was dutifully following those standards when I arrived. While not the only basis for a hiring decision, the assessment results were weighed heavily.

Ever the nerd, I did a study to compare our most successful leaders to the vendor's ideal profiles. The results were a mild surprise.

Many of our best leaders did not fit the ideal profile.

A senior executive did poorly on the cognitive test, though his many years of exemplary performance suggested he was pretty smart, or at least smart enough to do the job.

One of our best leaders appeared to have been hired by mistake. The results of both assessments were well outside the vendor's "ideal" range, and I wondered how she could have been hired with those results. Yet her actual performance indicated she was one of the company's top performers in nearly every category, from financial results to service quality to employee engagement.

 

The Challenge with Assessments

Hiring managers turn to assessments to help them solve two challenges:

  1. Make better hiring decisions

  2. Speed up the hiring process

Don't get me wrong, there's a place for assessments and they can sometimes work. (More on that in a moment.) There's also a major challenge.

A good assessment must be valid and reliable. Validity means it accurately assesses what you want to assess, while reliable means it does that consistently.

Looking back on my own research, the assessments my company was using were neither valid nor reliable. They had failed to correctly identify some top performers, while other top performers did fit the vendor's profile.

The big question is why?

Some assessments just aren't very good. They're based upon junk science and crackpot theories with no real evidence to back up their claims.

Other assessments have potential, but it's the vendors' suggested "ideal profiles" that are the problem. These profiles are often generic and not calibrated to your employees.

Think of it this way. Costco and The Ritz-Carlton are both known for outstanding customer service. However, it seems reasonable that the ideal employee is probably slightly different for both companies. 

 

How to Assess Your Assessments

First thing's first. Before investing in an assessment, decide which characteristics you are really looking for in a customer service employee. This will help you pinpoint what type of assessment, if any, to use.

You can use this hiring guide to help you.

If you do consider an assessment, make sure you calibrate it first. Here's how:

  1. Start by having your existing employees take the assessment.

  2. Evaluate the results for your top performers, middle performers, and bottom performers.

  3. Identify the differences (if any) between the assessment profile of each group.

This exercise will help you construct a more accurate hiring profile than the generic one provided by your vendor. 

You may also find that there's no rhyme or reason to the assessment results when you compare them to your top performers. That happened to me when I did this exercise. The results of top leaders were wildly inconsistent.

That tells you the assessment is not a valid or reliable instrument and shouldn't be used.

There's one last concern to mention here. Pre-hire assessments can sometimes put your company on shaky legal ground if they disproportionately screen out people of a particular gender or ethnicity. Make sure you consult your HR professional or employment attorney before giving any assessment the green light.

How to Hire Employees Who Fit Your Service Culture

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

You've probably heard the adage, "Hire for attitude, train for skills."

It sounds good, but how exactly do you hire for attitude? Customer service leaders struggle with this one. Many rely on off-beat interview tactics they hear about in blogs and books, such as asking questions like "What kind of fruit best describes your personality?" Some just like to have a friendly conversation to see what sort of vibe they get from each person.

Researchers have confirmed you'd make better hiring decisions if you skipped these sort of interviews entirely.

You need a systematic process if you want to hire for culture fit. 

There aren't a lot of great examples to follow. In fact, the biggest challenge when I wrote The Service Culture Handbook was finding good examples for the chapter on hiring. (One of the best examples I know is Publix.)

This post is an update from a post I wrote back in 2014.

interview.jpg

Start by Defining Your Culture

The very first thing you need is a clear definition of your culture. It's pretty tough to hire people who fit your service culture if you can't describe that that is!

A service culture is defined by what's called a customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. 

Let's imagine we started an online wine store that focuses on helping customers learn about wine and explore new wineries, varietals, and wines from different regions. Our customer service vision might be: We make it fun to discover great wine.

So people who work in our company should not only love wine, but definitely not be wine snobs. They should enjoy learning about wine and helping others experience the fun and joy of learning about wine, too. (I really want to start this business now!)

We can now use this vision as a basis for hiring people who will embrace our service culture.

 

Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

The next step is to identify the characteristics of an employee who fits your company's service culture. I use this worksheet to create what's called an ideal candidate profile.

This profile separates the characteristics we want in an employee into two categories:

  1. Must Have Characteristics

  2. Like to Have Characteristics

The must have characteristics are attributes a candidate must have or we would not consider hiring them. For instance, everyone we hire for our online wine store must have an enthusiasm for wine. They don't necessarily need to be an expert, they just need to really like learning about it.

A like to have characteristic is an attribute that would help us make a hiring decision but isn't essential. So we might not require our wine store employees to have extensive knowledge of different wine varietals, but a candidate who did have this knowledge might have an advantage over other candidates with similar qualifications.

hiringgrid.jpeg

One key test for your ideal candidate profile is to compare it to your existing employees. You'll need to revise your profile if you have any successful employee who did not possess one of the must haves when they were hired.

 

Devise Screening Tests

The final step in creating your hiring process is to devise tests to screen candidates for each item on your ideal candidate profile.

The most common way to do this is through interview questions. Each question should be designed to uncover something specific. You should also have a clear answer key before conducting the interview.

For instance, we could test our online wine shop candidates for the "enthusiasm for wine" characteristic by asking them to tell us about a recent wine tasting experience.

A answer that indicated a culture fit would be an enthusiastic story about discovering new wine, such as going wine tasting at a local winery or wine bar. A poor culture fit answer would be someone who hadn't tried any new wine recently, admits they don't really like wine, or describes a story that sounds more like going out and partying.

I highly recommend Janis Whitaker's excellent book, Interviewing by Example, for clear guidance on how to write effective interview questions.

There are other ways to test an employee's qualifications besides interview questions. Here are a few examples:

  • Resume or LinkedIn profile

  • Skills assessments

  • Small project

We might screen potential wine shop employees for the "continuous learner" attribute by  looking for recent training classes, certifications, or education on their resume or LinkedIn profile. These don't necessarily need to be wine related since any recent learning indicates this person is likely a continuous learner.

Some companies have customer service employees respond to a realistic customer email to gauge both their writing style and resourcefulness. Assessing skills through a small project is another great way to learn a lot about a candidate.

 

Take Action

Assess your current hiring process by asking these three questions:

  1. Does your company (or team) have a customer service vision?

  2. Do you have an ideal candidate profile?

  3. Do you have screening tests for each characteristic on the profile?

The answers will help you decide where to start. You can learn more and see additional examples by viewing this on-demand webinar from ICMI.

The Amazingly Simple Way to Develop Better Interview Questions

Coming up with interview questions can be tricky.

I'm going to focus on hiring customer service employees, but my experience as a recruiter has taught me that it's a tricky process for nearly any role. 

There's no shortage of ideas on the topic. Books, articles, and webinars galore are dedicated to coming up with interview questions. The problem is it's just too much to make sense of it all.

You might ask the typical questions, such as "Why do you want to work here?"

Some people ask challenging questions, such as "What would your last boss say was your biggest weakness?" (Correct answer: "Sometimes I work too hard because I care too damn much.")

Others enjoy weird questions that focus on how the candidate answers: "If you were a fruit, what kind of fruit would you be and why?"

There's often a fatal flaw in all of these approaches. A flaw so bad that research shows you'd make better hiring decisions if you skip the interview questions entirely.

Three simple steps can fix that.

Step 1: Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

Just as a teacher wouldn't give a test without making an answer key, asking interview questions without knowing what a successful candidate should say is a recipe for disaster.

You can solve this problem by creating an Ideal Candidate Profile. It's a list of the specific skills and attributes that would make a job applicant the ideal candidate. The profile ultimately serves as the answer key for your interviews. 

For example, let's say you manage a tasting room at a winery and want to hire a wine room host to conduct tastings and sell wine. Some wineries promote a party-like atmosphere, but your winery really focuses on educating guests about great wine so they'll appreciate it more.

So one item on your Ideal Candidate Profile for a wine room host might be "a passion for learning about wine." Someone who loves learning about wine is more likely to share that passion with your guests, which is exactly what your winery wants.

You can use this handy tool to create your own Ideal Candidate Profile. I've even included a couple of how-to videos.

 

Step 2: Develop Your Questions

The next step is to develop at least one interview question for every item on Your Ideal Candidate Profile.

The idea is to use the interview to help you uncover whether or not a candidate has the specific qualities you're looking for. If you want someone who is a team player, you should have a question that helps you learn if this person is truly good at teamwork. 

Let's go back to the winery example. Here's a question that might help you discover if a person has a passion for learning about wine:

"Can you tell me about the last time you went wine tasting?"

Someone who has a passion for learning about wine will spend their own time exploring wineries and learning all they can. They'll be able to describe a specific experience and what they learned from it.

The advantage of developing your own interview questions (versus copying from a generic list) is you can use the questions to target specific characteristics. I found Janis Whitaker's excellent Interviewing by Example workbook to be a huge help with this task.

 

Step 3: Evaluate Your Candidates

By now, you should have an Ideal Candidate Profile and an interview question for each characteristic. The final step is to apply these in a job interview. 

Let's say you interview three candidates for the wine room host position. All have prior customer service experience and have warm, outgoing personalities. Take a look at their answers to the question, "Can you tell me about the last time you went wine tasting?"

Candidate A: It was a long time ago. I went with some friends and I remember it was a lot of fun. Let’s just say it was a good thing we had a driver! If I get this job, I definitely plan to go a lot more often.

Candidate B: I love wine tasting! I went out with some friends two weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. At one winery, we got to do a cave tour where we walked through these elaborate wine caves. Another winery offered flights on this beautiful patio that overlooked the entire valley.

Candidate C: I’ve been so busy with work and school that I don’t get to visit wineries too often. However, my friends and I like to organize our own wine tastings. We pick a theme, such as a particular region or grape, and everyone brings a bottle. The bottles are covered in paper bags so we don’t know which wine we are tasting, and we all compare notes about what we like and don’t like.

Candidate D: I read about a winery where you can taste the same wine out of two different oak barrels. I often hear winemakers talking about American oak or French oak, so I thought this would be a great way to learn how oak influences wine. It was a fun experience, because you really can tell the difference when you're tasting the same wine from the two barrels side by side. I learned the American oak is a little bolder and brings out more vanilla flavors, while the French oak is a little more subtle with spicier tastes.

Which candidate would you pick?

All four seem to enjoy wine. But the Ideal Candidate Profile indicates the perfect employee will have “a passion for learning about wine.”

Based on their answers, Candidates A and B do not fit the profile. Neither expressed a passion for learning about wine.

Candidate C fits the profile, even though they don’t go wine tasting. Their thoughtful answer made it clear they still enjoy learning about wine and found a creative way to do it with limited time and money.

Candidate D also fits the profile. They actively sought out a tasting experiences to learn more.

This is just one interview question. Perhaps Candidate C or D will further separate themselves as you ask them additional questions.

The Ideal Candidate Profile helps you identify up to five must have qualities for your ideal candidate. Each dimension will give you a clearer idea of whether the candidate is qualified for the job.

How to Hire for Culture Fit

There are two employees almost every customer service leader has had.

One employee has crazy talent. She has all the skills you could ever want and a resume a mile long. She’s also a pain to work with. Customers sometimes complain about her attitude.

Another employee is a little lighter in the skill department. He needs a lot of training, but he’s a natural problem-solver and a quick learner. Customers love his can-do attitude. Co-workers love his teamwork.

Who would you rather have on your team?

Most of us would prefer the employee who fits our culture over the highly skilled, but highly difficult employee.

Here’s a guide that can help you find more of those people.

Step 1: Define Culture

Imagine what the world would be like if there were no shoe sizes. You would walk into a shoe store and be completely unable to tell the salesperson what size shoe you needed. The only way to find shoes that fit was to try on pair after pair until you found one you liked.

Pretty tedious, right?

Hiring for culture fit without a clearly defined culture is the same thing. It’s pretty difficult to find something if you don’t really know what you’re looking for.

So, what is culture?

Culture is what we do. And, what we do is shaped by all the signals around us. Some signals are good and point us in the right direction. Some signals are bad and distract us. 

You can fix this by creating a customer service vision. This is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that serves as a compass to point everyone in the right direction. You can use my customer service vision worksheet as a guide. 

 

Step 2: Create an Ideal Candidate Profile

An ideal candidate profile describes the attributes of an employee who is most likely to be successful in the job. It combines the skills they need to do the work with the qualities they must possess to fully embrace the customer service vision.

You can use this handy worksheet to help you.

The key to this exercise is narrowing down your list to just a few must-have skills and attributes. The more must-haves you add to the list, the harder it will be to actually find a person who fits.

 

Step 3: Develop Tests

The last step is to devise ways to determine if a job applicant possesses the attributes they need to be successful.

Think beyond interview questions here. How can you get concrete evidence that they’re a great fit?

Here are a few examples:

A technical support team asks applicants to respond to a customer email. This allows them to test the applicants’ resourcefulness (the answers are on the company’s website) along with their communication and customer service skills.

The parking department on a college campus deliberately neglects to offer directions to their office when they schedule interviews with job applicants. They rely on applicants to either be assertive enough to ask or creative enough to figure it out on their own. An applicant who arrives late for an interview because they couldn’t find parking is probably ill-suited to helping customers navigate the same obstacles.

 

Additional Resources

Whole Foods, Southwest Airlines, and Zappos are all known for outstanding service and strong cultures. Check out the hiring page for each company. They all focus deeply on culture fit. 

5 Ways to Hire Faster

Hiring the right people takes time, but there are shortcuts.

Hiring the right people takes time, but there are shortcuts.

This post originally appeared on the Call Center Demo and Conference website. I'll be facilitating a session at the conference titled "Staff Up! 10 Ways to Hire and Train Faster"   on Tuesday, October 22. The conference is in Atlanta, Georgia and early-bird rates expire this Friday, September 6.

 

You’ve just gotten the green light to add some staff to your call center team. Adding headcount will bring some much needed relief to an overworked team, but it can take quite a bit of time to get new employees hired and up to speed. Unfortunately, you don’t have a lot of time.

This post offers five tips to help you speed up the process. But, before you get started, make sure you have two prerequisites:

  1. A profile of the ideal candidate
  2. A way to screen candidates to ensure they meet the ideal criteria.

These two items will ensure you know what you are looking for and can tell the difference between a qualified and an unqualified applicant. You’re welcome to download my free worksheet and view the short how-to videos if you haven’t completed these steps already: www.toistersolutions.com/competency

Once you have those two prerequisites in place, you’re ready to start hiring. Here are five tips to help you speed up the process.

 

Tip #1: Hire a temp agency

The knock against temp agencies is they can charge some hefty fees, particularly for temp to hire placements. That may be true, but there are some good reasons why you might turn to an agency to help you hire.

The first is speed. When I managed a call center, I knew I could place a call in the afternoon and have interviews set up the next morning. The second is volume. Temp agencies hire for multiple clients so they have access to a much broader pool of candidates. The third is screening. Agencies can do a lot of basic screening for you that you would otherwise have to do on your own, such as testing for computer skills.

 

Tip #2: Go hunting

In a perfect world, you post the job ad and watch the qualified applicants come stampeding in. In the real world, this doesn’t always happen. Don’t assume that your next superstar employee is actively looking for a job. Talented employees often have jobs already but could be persuaded to join your team if the right opportunity came along.

Where can you find someone who isn’t looking? Try searching on LinkedIn. Post the job announcement on your own social networks and ask people to share. You can even try networking with employees at the call center across town.

 

Tip #3: Lower the bar

Before you dismiss this idea as just plain crazy, think about what someone really needs to be successful when they join your company. Each additional requirement decreases the number of available candidates so you can access a broader pool by eliminating requirements.

A great example comes from insurance companies. They often need their call center representatives to be licensed. It would be extremely difficult to find enough licensed insurance professionals to meet their staffing needs so they incorporate the licensing process into their new hire training program.

 

Tip #4: Find people who are passionate about what you do

When I was a teenager, my first job was in a retail clothing store. Why did I work there? Because I bought all my clothes there and the employee discount was awesome! Once I was hired, I learned the store had a steady stream of applications from people like me so they never had a problem finding new employees.

Many companies have groups of potential employees who are already passionate about your company, your product, or your industry. These people might be customers or just enthusiasts. For nonprofits, they are often volunteers. Find out who they are, where they are, and make sure they see your job posting!

 

Tip #5: Hire from other departments

Your next call center employee might already work for your company.

Starbucks was one of the site tours at ACCE 2013 in Seattle. The call center we toured assisted employees who worked at Starbucks stores with their human resources needs. On our tour, we learned that most of their contact center employees come from their stores!

This concept can also work for short-term or seasonal staffing needs. When I worked in a large call center, our quality assurance and training teams served as emergency back-up agents. Occasionally, when things got really busy, we’d all get on the phones and answer calls. It helped the call center quickly respond to a spike in calls but it also kept our own skills sharp so we could do a better job of training agents and monitoring calls.

 

Want more?

I’ll be sharing more ideas to help you speed up the hiring process at the Call Center Demo and Conference in October. My session is called Staff Up! 10 Ways to Hire and Train Faster and will also include ideas for training new employees once you get them in the door.