How to Find Employees Who Fit Your Company’s Culture

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1.     Feature Article

 

How to Find Employees Who Fit Your Company’s Culture
By John DiJulius, Chief Revolution Officer

One of my more popular articles was The 3 Best Ways To Make Your Interview Process Ungameable. It is so important to select people who are going to align with your core values and company culture. One way or another everyone you hire contributes to your culture. Through research I have found three more best practices that help find those true future rock stars versus the posers.

The first two come from Jesse Cole, the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas. He spoke at last year’s Customer Service Revolution and was interviewed earlier this year on Episode #5 of our podcast. He has so many brilliant ideas that are easy to implement.

Jesse has an amazing culture, made up of what most leaders think are the most difficult generations to manage, Millennials & Gen Z’s. Not for him—his employees are engaged and bought-in to Jesse’s core values and high expectations of a Fan First culture.

Cover Letter Videos & Future Resume Videos

Here are two examples of how Jesse finds these types of team members to join his organizations. Part of his employee interview process is to have all the candidates submit two videos: a cover letter and a future resume. “Video cover letters are huge for us because we can immediately see personality and enthusiasm from a person. Do they lift us up? Do they bring energy?” Cole shares.

“For us, both the video cover letter and future resume are tests on our core beliefs of the Fans First Way. These core beliefs are: Always Be Caring, Different, Enthusiastic, Fun, Growing, and Hungry. The “Always Be” is important because if we don’t see some of these traits from their first video introduction to us, we know it will be hard to get that out of them as a future employee,” explains Cole.

In a video cover letter, Cole’s team can spot enthusiasm and fun immediately. With future resume, they can see traits like growth & hunger. Cole says, “What do they want to do in the next five years? 10 years?  Do they want to be in same position, or do they want to grow more and make a bigger difference?”

This also gives Cole’s team an opportunity to see the candidates’ creativity. How are they filming the video cover letter? What are they wearing? Where are they? Is it something normal or is it different? This is another one of their core values.

The future resume video also shows how the candidate aligns with their core values. How is the layout? What projects do they share they will work on? How much fun do they have with it or is it basic and boring? “Within a few seconds on the video we can tell if we want to hang out with that person. All of our positions are outward facing and work with our fans regularly, so this is important. If we don’t want to hang out with them, if they don’t bring energy and lift us up, why would our fans want to be around them either,” says Cole.

Don’t ask them what they would do in a situation

In his book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, author Adam Grant suggests a great way to screen out the potential employee candidates that don’t align with your organization’s value, is to present them with situational interviews. But not the way most organizations do them.

“A lot of organizations do behavioral interviews that are backward looking and asking about your history, what you’ve accomplished, what challenges you’ve overcome, and those actually don’t turn out to be very effective. They suffer from an apples and oranges problem, it’s very hard to compare it to people’s work histories,” explains Grant.

Even taking it one step further, Grant doesn’t suggest asking the candidate what they would do in a given situation, because most people would give the “right” answer, not necessarily how they would truly react in that situation. What Grant does suggest, instead of asking, “what would you do,” ask, “how do you think most people would handle…”

Most of us tend to project our own motivations on other people. So, if you give someone a scenario where it’s not clear what the appropriate behavior is, people will tend to predict based on what they would do in that situation.

*Related – How to Make an Inspiring New Employee Orientation Class

 

2.   Bronkar Lee Performing at The 2020 Customer Service Revolution

 

Bronkar 2020head Cropped 875x1024, The DiJulius Group

The DiJulius Group is thrilled to announce that Bronkar Lee is performing again at this year’s virtual Customer Service Revolution. Bronkar isn’t your typical keynotespeaker. His unique background includes touring Europe as ringmaster to a world-renowned circus, appearing with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, starring in a Super Bowl commercial, and beatboxing with his son in a viral video that received over 200 million views. Bronkar provides a refreshingly energetic perspective on the importance of physical health, mental wellbeing, and personal development.
Ignite Your Passion for Learning
One of the biggest roadblocks on life’s journey is the resistance to learning new things. But when we give ourselves permission to expand beyond our current mindset, we open the door to surprisingly beautiful opportunities.
In this energetic talk, Bronkar shares lessons learned from 20+ years of stage performance, opening with a sampling of a few of the 42 instruments he’s mastered. You’ll learn how to welcome mistakes, leverage your skills, and embrace lifelong learning.

3.   Newest Episode of The Customer Service Revolution Podcast

 

CSR Ep022 FB Feature, The DiJulius Group

In Episode 022, The DiJulius Group’s Chief Revolution Officer John DiJulius talks with Health and Wellness expert, Dr. Paul Bizjak. Dr. Paul has worked and researched extensively to deconstruct the healthiest, happiest, and most successful people on the planet, finding the answers in a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern technology.

 

In this episode you will learn:

 

  • Dr. Paul’s journey into becoming obsessed about health and wellness
  • What is a serial self-experimenter
  • How do we remain positive and focused regardless of what is going on in our world today
  • His opinion of COVID-19 and how it differs from what we are hearing on TV
  • What I believe the best thing your listeners can do to prevent or reduce the risk of COVID-19
  • Single best bio-hack
  • How he overcame personal struggles and bad decision making when he was young
  • How he overcame the tragic loss of his wife to cancer
  • What Dr. Paul will be presenting on at the 2020 Virtual Customer Service Revolution

 

4.    Is Your Team Ready to Join The Customer Service Revolution?

 

Get your team some Customer Service Revolution swag!

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5.    Register for The 2020 Virtual Customer Service Revolution

Week 1 of 5 (every Thursday in October) starts next week!

 

2020 Has Been An Extraordinary Challenge… as a result, you’ve probably experienced the greatest stress of your career. The truth is, this year businesses must:

 

  • Make changes, or risk not making it in the long run.
  • Compete on service, not price.
  • Value customer loyalty above all else.
More than ever, caring for your customers is the most important thing you can do.
This is so much more than customer service or even business. This conference is meant to help people deal with all the uncertainty and help persevere personally and professionally.

 

Register today and join us to Reimagine… Revolutionize!

 

About The Author

John DiJulius

John R. DiJulius is a best-selling author, consultant, keynote speaker and President of The DiJulius Group, the leading Customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on Customer experience trends and best practices.