Bring along others
To grow your company, you need people who can help grow it. You need brainpower that you can leverage.
DiZio states it simply: He wants people who are better than he is.
“I’m looking for people to be better than me, especially in their field,” he says. “I want them to be much better than me. Do I try to shape their thoughts a bit? I probably do, but after a while, I want them to run with their ideas, shape them, share them and keep them on the right path of where the company is headed. As long as they stay within our guidelines, we try to have fun with the concept. It’s a fun business — it’s pretzels, and we try to play that up.”
But if you want fun in your culture, you have to be serious about finding people who want to have fun. You need to find people who are a good personality match for your company. In the recruitment process, DiZio does what a lot of company leaders do. He brings franchisee and management candidates in for multiple rounds of interviews with executives from various areas of the company.
But he and his staff don’t do a lot of talking. They ask questions and do a lot of listening.
“We sit back and listen maybe 90 percent of the time in an interview,” he says. “We’ll ask questions and let them elaborate to the best of their ability. It goes back to the idea that as the CEO, you want people who are smarter than you.”
By asking initial questions, sitting back and listening, DiZio gets a gauge on how passionate a candidate is for his company’s mission and products. If DiZio doesn’t get a good feel for the person’s excitement, chances are it’s not a good match.
“We ask them what excites them about our brand and our products,” he says. “A lot of our franchisees were customers and already love the brand and the product. But some might not be familiar with it. Maybe they grew up in California, moved here and don’t have a feel for our brand. But if they don’t have that passion for what we do, it’s really hard for us to connect with them. You can definitely sense during the interview process how excited they are about what you do.”
How to reach: Philly Pretzel Factory, (800) 679-4221 or www.phillysoftpretzelfactory.com
