A New Way to Find Great Employees
There are a lot of smart things that most companies don’t do. Luckily, the wonders of blogs and consultants help you get some ideas about what smart things your company can do. Today, I am going to write about a highly effective way to find great employees for customer service jobs.
For anyone who has ever tried to recruit great customer service employees, you know it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Some people are qualified, but don’t have the right attitude. Others aren’t qualified, but have the perfect attitude. The best people already seem to have jobs. That’s why you need to be different and creative with your recruiting methods.
My brilliant suggestion is this: be on the lookout for great employees, everywhere. It may seem like common sense, but so few companies do it.
For example, I’ve had great customer service experiences at/with:
- my local grocery store
- fast food restaurants
- regular restaurants
- clothing stores
- my ISP
- using various services online (see this post about ChaCha)
The customer service at all these locations isn’t always consistently amazing, but I’ve had at least one notable (and positive) experience at each. The difference is in the representative and usually, their attitude. The type of person who can make a customer service experience notable just because of a great attitude is the type of person you want working for you.
So why not ask? That’s part two of the brilliant suggestion. Offer these employees your card and say something like “If you’re ever looking for a job, we’d be really interested in interviewing you for a customer service position we have an opening for.”
Here are some things worth noting:
- This can be considered “poaching” employees, but you can use your judgement to decide it’s right or not. If employees are happy where they are, they won’t leave. Use your judgement about whether you feel it’s right or not.
- Usually, you will be able to tell whether or not the person is interested pretty quickly.
- Your rate of offers to interviews to hires will probably be pretty low, but it’s worth it, especially if you have a hard time recruiting quality people.
- Be relatively stingy with your offers. Don’t hand out your card to people who do okay. You’re looking for people who do an exceptional job.
- You likely have to have a hire the smile, train the skill type philosophy for this to work. Chances are, the people you offer jobs to won’t have the specific skills needed to do the job (yet).
So, if you go to a place regularly and know of a person that seems to have a great attitude, consider offering them your card. Encourage your employees to do the same.
There are a lot of great people out there just waiting to be discovered, so get started.
Photo courtesy of Brymer.
