15-Second Hiring

In November I was lucky enough to be invited by my boss Karyn to go with her and Carol, our Senior Account Strategist, to a morning program offered through the Entrepreneurs Organization, called “Harvard Mini Business Program – Service Excellence Your Competitive Advantage”.

The speaker, Frances Frei from Harvard Business School, was a fantastic and engaging speaker who had the great ability to be both funny and direct, all the while providing a ridiculous amount of business information over a 4 hour period.

More than a month later there are lots of things that she said that are still in my head. I won’t be able to go into all of them here for many reasons, not least of which I wouldn’t do her delivery of the material justice (Honestly, if you looked away and only listened you would swear that it was Ellen Degeneres - with a newly acquired Harvard degree, I suppose - speaking to you).

So I’ll focus here on just one small thing that she discussed about service excellence. It was on how to resource properly for great customer experience. Starting with hiring. She explained a very critical exercise for a business to do before hiring: establish your 15-second rule. This rule’s objective is to determine how you will be able to tell - in 15 seconds - whether the candidate will be a good fit for your company. The rule will be different for every company, of course, and what it takes to find your rule is to truly examine your company’s values and brand.

The example that she gave was of a retail-oriented company who wanted to be accessible to customers, and therefore wanted to provide friendly front counter staff. So during the interviews they watched the candidate’s face in its resting state. If the candidate had a smile on his face while in his resting state, i.e. his default expression was a smile - bingo, that was the right person.

I found this to be a very fascinating idea and I find myself playing with it a lot trying to come up with my 15-second rule. I love the idea that is seems so simple, but really it is very complex and requires a lot of thoughtful contemplation, analysis, and iterations because it must get at the root of the job and, most importantly, at the roots of your company’s distinctive values. What services do you offer? Why are you different from your competitors? What do your customers love most about you? And once you know those, you can zero in on finding the people who embody those values.