When You Hire Someone Before Knowing What You Want

My worst fear in the hotel business is that a person working the graveyard shift (11 PM — 7 AM) decides to not show up.

Imagine this.

You’ve taken a 3-hour flight to escape the business, and you are now in the magical vineyards of Napa Valley.

You’re with the love of your life, and there’s a decorated table with a bottle of wine and two delicious, juicy steaks (one of those super expensive, melt in your mouth type of steaks). You’re also on a moving train.

How romantic is that? You’re having expensive wine and steak… on a freaking train.

Suddenly, you get a call.

“URGENT!!! The graveyard guy isn’t answering, and there’s no one to cover for tonight!!! Please help!!!”

That’s right. Nine exclamation marks.

Can you imagine how quickly the mood of this romantic scene changes? In one instance, you’re in the highest state of relaxation, and then BOOM!

Fight or flight mode.

Most hotel owners have their own versions of this type of story. And that’s why they say the single most important thing is the people. Now this is nothing mind-blowing. Obviously, if a business has people it can rely on, it’s going to be way easier to run.

But what was less obvious to me at the time was figuring out how to FIND these reliable people.

My first attempt at trying this was interesting.

I needed to fill a front desk position so I posted a job ad on Craigslist. One guy seemed cool and I interviewed him. Here were my notes during the interview:

1) He was outgoing and social. I could tell that he could easily strike up conversations with anyone.

2) He was a father of three kids. He told me, “my kids are all I care about, and I want them to succeed.” He seemed very sincere about it.

3) He had front desk experience at another hotel.

These all were good things: easy to talk to, caring family man, prior work experience. And before the interview ended he was already hired in my head.

But six months after bringing on this father of three, I fired him. The cameras had caught him taking money from the drawers in the back office, and he was let go immediately.

Today, when I think back to why I hired the guy in the first place, I cringe. There were so many red flags that shouted, “DON’T HIRE ME.”

I missed these red flags because I didn’t have a game plan for my recruiting. I was making the most common recruiting mistake.

I was not clear on what I needed.

What I needed was a “scorecard.” The term comes from the book Who, and it’s broken down into three components.

1) Mission — the purpose for the position

That is the essence of the position, and it’s the only thing we need to focus on.

Don’t get fancy.

Mission: improve online reviews by putting guests into the rooms efficiently, and making sure they are happy.

That’s it.

In the interview, the guy went on and on about his daughters. And I’ll tell you honestly — I was the sucker in the room.

I created stories in my head about how loving and caring he was, and the more he talked about it the more I liked him. But as touchy-feely as this was, it didn’t address my business problem. I needed someone to put guests into rooms efficiently and make them happy.

That’s it.

2) Outcome — what needs to be done

Outcome: The front desk clerk must increase the hotel’s service score to 7.5 by the end of Q4

The twist with this is that it isn’t meant for us — it’s for the candidates. We use it to send a message.

We tell the candidate, “hey buddy… before we pay you, you need to make sure you can do all of these things we want.”

This benefits us in two ways.

1. You define exactly what it means to fail or succeed for them. In the book, the author calls this “liberating” for the new hire.
2. You scare away the low-performers. Why would a lazy person want to work at a company with a boss that expects “so much”?

3) Competency — what is needed to accomplish the mission

After having a mission and an outcome, we can now better define what is needed.

Here are the competencies that I was looking for:

1) Efficiency — check guests into the rooms quickly

(Example: solve problems quickly, composed in stressful situations)

2) Integrity — ensure customers are treated fairly

(Example: strong moral character, real desire to make things right)

Notice how both these items tie directly to the mission. And notice how my previous notes from the interview have now become irrelevant.

1) Being ‘easy to talk to’ is nice to have, but it’s a bit far off from “efficiency” or “integrity”

2) Being a father (again) is irrelevant

3) Having prior experience is actually a very strong case. But I didn’t have a list of competencies so I didn’t know the right questions to ask. It makes this item incomplete, and therefore irrelevant noise.

And that’s it.

You now know a simple framework for recruiting candidates. You should read the book yourself as it deep dives into each component, but even if you spend just a little bit of time following this framework, it could help you tremendously.

For me, sitting down for 10 minutes to write out a scorecard could have been the extra step that prevented a big recruiting mistake.