- Hiring the right people is one of the cornerstones
of building a customer-centric culture.
You want people who embrace your culture
and contribute to the customer service vision.
Here's a three-step process to help you make
smart hiring decisions.
Step one is to create what's called
an ideal candidate profile.
This is a description of someone who aligns
with your customer service vision.
You create an ideal candidate profile
by making two lists.
The first list contains up to five characteristics
an employee must have to be successful
in your company, location, or team.
You would not hire someone who did not possess them.
These are attributes or qualities that would help
the person contribute to our customer service vision
rather than the skills or qualifications necessary
to do a specific job.
It's a good idea to limit this list to five,
or even fewer, because each much-have quality
you add makes it more difficult to find someone
who has them all.
You may also wish to list some like-to-have characteristics.
You would hire someone who did not possess these qualities,
but they can help separate well-qualified candidates
when making a final decision.
Let's imagine we're creating an ideal candidate profile
for a company that makes a travel app for smartphones.
The travel app company's vision is
we help travelers discover new experiences.
So our must-haves include someone who is helpful,
because the company is focused on helping travelers.
Curious, because we are helping travelers
discover new experiences.
And adventurous, because people who use our app
are looking for an adventure themselves.
We've also identified a couple of
like-to-have characteristics.
These include someone who travels extensively themselves
since they will be able to relate to our customers.
And someone who has previously worked
in a start-up company so they will understand
the unique environment we work in.
Now remember, the like-to-have characteristics
can separate two qualified candidates,
but we'd still be willing to hire someone
who did not have them.
The next step is to validate our ideal candidate profile.
We want to be sure the profile actually matches
our ideal candidate.
Do this by comparing your ideal candidate profile
to existing successful employees.
Cross off must-have characteristics that everyone
did not have at the time of hire
since these qualities aren't absolutely necessary
to be successful.
The third step is to create screening tests
to determine whether job applicants
fit your ideal candidate profile.
There are a number of different screening tests
we can create, including interview questions,
looking at the candidate's LinkedIn profile or resume,
reviewing the candidate's cover letter,
conducting a skills assessment,
or even doing a simulation.
I'd like to show you some examples
for our travel app company.
This one screens for the helpful characteristic.
Candidates are given a sample customer email
and asked to write a response using information
they find on the company website.
It's a good idea to create an answer key
for all of your screening tests so you know
what you are looking for.
In this case, we want an email that's clearly written
in a friendly tone, answers the customer's question,
and offers some additional assistance.
For the curious characteristic, we might screen applicants
by asking them to describe something interesting
in their city that most visitors would not know about.
An interesting response would probably come easily
from someone who is naturally curious.
I've included sample screening tests
for all of the characteristics we're looking for
in a sample ideal candidate profile that you can download.
And now it's your turn.
I recommend you download the ideal candidate
profile worksheet and use it to identify
what makes someone fit with the culture
for your organization or team.
This can take a bit of effort,
but the payoff is you will become more adept
at hiring people who truly fit your culture.