Espresso: Who Gives a Crap Hiring Tactics for Great Talent - Culture Add vs. Fit

0:05the one that i sort of you know exercise my rare veto right on recently was um i think we wanted to write on the side of a box, let's get the potty started. And I just thought, I don't know. Like, I just, I think, I think that's probably funny for, you know, 60, 70, 80 % of people, but I'm worried about the other, you know, the small percentage, the possibly vocal minority that, that maybe that one goes a little bit too far. So that's, that's the, it doesn't happen very often these days. Um, but that's the one that, that comes to mind. Um, but in general, all you know that team are incredible they um you know they're they're just a very we have a very creative creative team that have a lot of fun bringing some ludicrous ideas to life i just love discussing the the culture of these ridiculous ideas i know you talked about when you hire people you say yeah there's a there's a thing is i'm a fold scrunches or folders I think is, I don't know, this is from a podcast quite a while ago I listened to, but that's a question you ask when you hire people, if I'm right in saying, like unpack that for listeners because I think it's brilliant.

1:20If it's not too annoying to talk about. Yeah, I think it sort of shows, you know, when we ask people questions before they start, there's obviously a lot of very serious stuff in there, but we do want our brand to kind of shine through in who we are. And, and, and part of that, you know, part of the hiring process is always a presentation back to us. And that allows us to understand how someone will interpret the brand and insert their own jokes, whether they're visual or written or, you know, whatever that may look like. And, and folder and scrunch is kind of part of that process where we're sort of saying, you know, Hey, we're serious and we employ people.

2:01And that's a very serious thing that we need to get right but we also aren't that serious and here's some of the you know the fun stuff that comes along with working with us i think we found um i think 60 of our company are folders 40 are scrunches we find folders over index in our finance team and scrunches over index in our creative team that's so jokes and just i don't know listeners probably will get this but this is just it's how you wipe your ass basically just make it clear yeah yeah good good to clarify because we did have one team member who'd been with us for about a year before the penny dropped for him he was like oh my god i just figured out what folder or scruncher meant i thought it was about whether i threw my clothes into my wardrobe or whether i folded them up before they went in so so it might not be apparent to everyone but that's exactly what we are talking about that's and also i just find that hilarious how the way the accountant team the finance and ops team like their ass are definitely folders and you just imagine all the curators scrunchers yeah Yeah.

3:00And so now, you know, now my wife and I are folders. We've got our son as a folder and our daughter as a scruncher and I'm just scratching my head. Like what, you know, what's she going to be when she grows up? She'll be the feisty, feisty rambunctious creative. And I want to, I want to go, go into this because you're one of the brands, in my opinion, that have kept the magic as you've scaled. And I, another learning from doing those, these podcasts is sometimes scale can kill magic and scale can kill culture. Um, often what happens in kind of food and drink, it's not like a blanket statement, but a lot of times you get people who come in who, who, who aren't the right culture fit, who aren't the right hiring.

3:42And it just, it can be like a cataclysmic bomb that just ruins, decimates the culture. Um, maybe that's a strong way of saying it, but you know what I mean? And, um, but you've seemed to seem to do this right. And you said you asked some really serious questions when you hire, but you also asked some quite jokes questions when you hire. what are the serious questions i know it's different per role but just this could really help people listening what are some of the like the the serious questions you ask first and then what are some of the playful frivolous questions you ask to to pull out that that that fun yeah yeah i guess when i think about you know we think about culture and hiring as trying to find the right culture adds to the business so it's not culture fits it's you know culture is continuously evolving we're adding people in will they add to the culture um and so when we're asking serious questions you know it's technical questions like how good at this sorry just sorry to interrupt sorry to interrupt so so but by culture add what because i haven't heard that phrase before if i'm being honest but what do you mean by that sorry so that's like how's that different from fit because everyone thinks right i need the right culture fit but that's the narrative it implies that you've got fixed guardrails and someone has to fit inside them.

4:59What we're saying culture out is this person may be different to what we've got inside the organisation today, but we believe that they're an addition that is worthwhile and they will stretch the culture in a way that is meaningfully better or positive. And so it's, you know, I think part of the problem with hiring and diversity and equity and inclusion is that often people sort of match who they are themselves when they're hiring people. And so we're actively trying to push people to think about who's, you know, what are the right additions rather than, you know, someone who's a culture fit within the organisation that we have today.

5:43And we believe, you know, diverse teams, diverse cultures will outperform in the long run. There's a lot of kind of science that says that that's true. and so we want to be kind of pushing and stretching and evolving the culture over time and hiring in a way that enables us to do that. That's kind of the philosophy. So to try and figure out whether someone is a good culture ad, you know, we've got a lot of technical questions we want to understand. Can this person be great at their job or the role that we've got for them? But then we've got a lot of questions about, you know, can this person thrive in our organisation?

6:20And so we're a remote first organization. We've always been a remote first organization. For some people before COVID, that was a big problem. They'd come in and they'd never worked in a remote team before. And about two months in, they'd hit this slump where they're like, I don't know if I can do this. I think I need an office to be able to, you know, actually do my job well. And we'd have to coach people through that and get them out the other side. And so, you know, a lot of our questions before COVID were about, you know, have you worked in a remote environment before? What does that look like?

6:53What do you need to succeed? And trying to understand whether people can thrive in that environment and whether we could support them through it if we thought there were risks. so they're kind of examples of the like you know the serious stuff and then the fun stuff for us you know it probably it probably kind of creeps in around the the the more serious stuff so one of the ways that we sort of you know informally kind of assess for this is when a candidate's coming through our interview process the the second last stage is the homework stage where we give them a deck that's got our brand guidelines in it and allow them to present back on their homework assignment using the Who Gives a Crap brand.

7:36And so it shows us how they incorporate, you know, our brand into their thinking and if they're able and comfortable to stretch that in ways that bring humour out or whether, you know, it doesn't kind of translate in the way that it needs to. And that's not a perfect test. Some people aren't great presenters and don't need to be and will never do a presentation in their life, but it allows us to understand how someone approaches the work that they do and working and collaborating with other people and presenting back to them as well. But you don't need to nail that presentation to work with us.

8:17As I said, it's for us to see how you work rather than what the final output necessarily looks like. quick one guys Espresso's got a brand new sponsor Unleashed Unleashed is inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use Unleashed daily at Ireland I bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it? save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is don't miss availability look your favourite brands literally use Unleashed as their backbone candykins tiny rebel trip always religiously look there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with josh and his wonderful sales team at unleashed they're amazing even nothing comes of it and even better news you'll get your first month free if you reference hungry thank you i think what you said there about this culture ad piece is just fascinating simon it's it's like re-jigging the way i'm thinking about to do some of these conversations which i love well i love doing them but what you said there about it being a remote based um business even pre-covid that's mad because not the narrative can always be broken right but the there's a big podcaster over here called steve steven bartler i don't know if he's reached australian shores yet he's great yeah yeah um he talks a lot yeah yeah but he taught he was i listened to a podcast about him the other day um he was talking the other day about how he has his team in the office like mandatory because he believes when people are closer together back to your what is a brand it's a feeling it's it's a it's a it's an evocation of evoking emotion and a purpose he finds it easier in an office space which i kind of get what why what's your why were you guys remote like what's the advantage you you get for being remote and surely it's really hard to ingrain that mission when people aren't always there?

10:16I'd just love to explore that. No, I don't think that's true. But let's come back to what Stephen said. So, he believes that it's easier to do that when he's got everyone in the office. So, I think when you think about that sentence, all it is assessing is the return to the business, but it doesn't assess the cost to the employee. And so, you could probably break down what he's talking about and say, well, okay, let's suppose we agree that that's true. And we do. We do believe that FaceTime and collaboration is important, but does it need to be five days a week from nine to five? Should it be seven days a week?

10:59Should it be three? Should it be two? Does it need to be like that for every function in the business? You know, I know someone who works at, I probably shouldn't say the company, but a very large tech company in Los Angeles. And they've just mandated that he has to go into the office three days a week. For him, that's an hour and a half commute in traffic. He doesn't work with a single person in that office. So he has to drive to the office to sit in the office with no one that he collaborates with for the day before driving home. And he's saying, I can't do this. Like I need to, I need to find another job.

11:39And so I think that equation of it's better for the company ignores the costs for the team. And so we see that benefit and we believe it's there, but we also believe that there's hidden benefits of letting the life of the team sometimes come before the work of the team. And if we get that balance right, the life work balance, not the work life balance, we think life comes before work. If we get that balance right, then what people are able to unleash at work can be different to what they are if they're constrained to a regular nine to five office environment, five days a week. And that's the philosophy that we started with.

12:23I didn't want to be in an office. I hate offices. I've spent not very much time in them, but enough time to know that I'd never want to be in an office. And, you know, it enables me to have a lifestyle that's very different to what I could have done if we had an office. We live an hour out of the city. I can go and swim in the ocean every morning. I can surf in the middle of the day. You know, the quality of life that I get from that makes me a better person at work the rest of the time when I'm at work. And we have a policy at work that if the surf is awesome, you know, it's pumping, it's a killer day, you don't want to be on a call with me because I am begrudgingly on a call with you while I'm thinking about what I'm missing out on, on the other side of that call.

13:09And no one, no one wants to be on the other side of that. And so our policy is, if that's happening, go and do the thing that's important to you so that you can then come back and do the best that you can at work. And we've, you know, for some people that's about spending time with their kids. For other people, it's about getting the right exercise schedule through the week for what's important to them. You know, for me, that was, yeah, there's lots of different parts to that but but i think it if you start to think about that equation as both a cost and a benefit then it starts to be a different equation to just thinking about the benefit to the company it reminds me of that book um by the patagonia founder like that my people go surfing i think it is which is which is great my only not not necessarily um uh pushback but i i i agree with this um life work balance is is super important but i now to do this podcast i've i'm living with my parents moved home and i sometimes feel super isolated and i'm like i'm like i want to be in a room with other creative people other scrunches you know uh and and almost get that get that osmosis and that like you know bouncing ideas off going for a coffee having the water cooler talk thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having ya if you want the fun episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please stay friends as well means the world to me