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I recently spent an extended period of time in a small Montana town with a surprising selection of gastronomic offerings; Mexican, Thai, Italian, Greek, wonderful bakeries and at least two creperies.

During a conversation with a local grad student she summarized her reluctance to visit one of the creperies by commenting “I prefer food without the anger, thank you very much.”   Her comment referenced an employee who worked for one of the creperies and practiced the consistent habit of taking an order without even the glint of a smile (more likely one of annoyance).  Pouring the batter on the griddle, this employee would proceed to slap the customer’s chosen ingredients on the crepe with an attitude of anger and unrest.  Extra cheese??? (heavy sigh), Ham…Ka-whack!  Detaching the delicate creation from the griddle this employee would slap it on the plate and shove it towards the intended recipient before proceeding to delight yet another customer…..yes, this was consistent, predictable behavior, not just one bad day.

Wow, what a story and what a poignant end result: a non-raving fan.  Looking for the learning in this story?   If you own a business where you and/or your employees interface with the public, be mindful of the attitude you portray to your customers.  Sure, all of us have challenging moments (a recent Jet Blue flight attendant comes to mind) and times when we are not at our best, but in this case the behavior was so predictable that the patron opted to no longer frequent the business.

I believe every business with a public/consumer interface will experience invaluable benefit (and ROI) from integrating personality profiling into their hiring practices. A simple profile can provide accurate information about an individual’s skills and temperament, enabling you to place them in a position where they and your business will thrive.  Well known profiles include DISC, The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, Meyers-Briggs and my personal favorite, the PREP Profile, which can be customized to job position and existing management personalities.  In Jim Collin’s phraseology: It’s about “getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.”

1.    Let an Intern Grow with the Company.  It’s so hard to find dedicated and loyal employees. Bringing an intern on board provides a “test-drive” of their abilities. This intern can learn the company inside out and help you brainstorm. At the end of the internship, there is a good chance that you will want to hire that person full-time. By this time, the goal is to build a trusting relationship with the individual. This is usually much better than hiring someone you are unfamiliar with.

2.    Bring Fresh Ideas to the Table.  It’s always nice to have a fresh set of eyes look things over and provide new and different opinions. The interns of today are the future buyers of tomorrow. Get their opinions. See what they are into. Test things with them. Have them ask their peers about products and services.

3.    Go Social Media Crazy. Employers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars having social media consultants teach their employees the ropes. These students already have integrated several of these social media tools into their daily lives. Give an intern a stab at running your online marketing. You may be surprised by what she can do.

4.    Micro-Manage When Necessary.  Look, many interns have never worked in the “real world” before. They have a different perception of how things work and how tasks should be managed and prioritized. Don’t assume anything. Teach them the ropes. Encourage them to ask questions. When assigning tasks, specify how much time they should be spending on each task and set your expectations.

5.    Make “Commitment” Your Magic Word. Take it from someone who has had both bad and good experiences with interns, stress the word commitment. In the interview process, ask the intern what the word commitment means to him. Explain clearly what you expect of him, the time commitment you would like, and how you feel about people who don’t take their commitments seriously. You want to hire an intern that you can rely on.

The sign of a successful company is growth. With that growth comes a need to expand your team – but how do you do it right?   My responsibility is to assess the gaps in the current support team coverage and find the person who can best fill those needs.

Assessing Company Need

Now that Syncplicity is using Salesforce for tracking support tickets, I have been collecting stats on ticket volume per hour. The stats revealed peak support times of 6am-4pm PST. By tracking daily ticket volume, I know that support’s busiest days are Sunday and Monday, and the slowest day is Saturday. Based on these stats, I can assume a few things about our users: we have a high percentage of international users (peak times begin on Sunday), and we have a high number of East Coast users (9 am EST is 6am PST). International support requires somebody who can work on the weekend, and East Coast users will need an early bird on our team. Now we have some high-level requirements for our hiring candidates.

Gathering Applications

With team needs assessed, I’m finally ready to start hiring. Candidates that are familiar with and love Syncplicity have a huge advantage, obviously, but I believe that technological skill or familiarity with the product need to be pretty low on the list of qualities a hiring manager should be looking for. The key qualities are patience, speed, accuracy, persistence, and personality. While technological skills with a product can be learned, it is much harder to train a contractor on the aforementioned qualities. When you find a candidate who sends an application that shows personality, curiosity, and intelligence, you know you have a person you can move forward with — whether or not he knows your product. In past hiring situations, my best hire was a stay-at-home mom with five children who never had touched my company’s product. With that number of kids, she definitely knew how to multi-task, deal with escalated issues, and give clear instructions. She was able to learn the product quickly and became one of my best employees.

Interviewing Candidates

I like to keep a healthy list of requirements for a candidate to get through the interview process. First — did they take the time to send a cover letter? If there’s no cover letter, I don’t even take a look. Not including a cover letter tells me that they are applying for jobs blindly and are not passionate about what they would be doing for me. For the users that make it to the next stage, I review their documents. Do they have the right skills? How do they communicate? How are their spelling and grammar? Finally, I have candidates fill out an application that is tailored to test their familiarity with general Internet technologies, how they handle difficult users, and how they instruct users on a support incident.

As the first applicants start trickling in, we’ll see how they fit into the overall Syncplicity team culture of user dedication, passion about the product, and pure awesomeness. Hopefully when I update again in two weeks, I’ll be discussing my new hire!

Interested in applying for the job at Syncplicity? Read the blog post announcing the job posting.