Start with professionals
The idea of El Dorado Furniture as both a family and professional place starts at the beginning: If Capó is going to hire you,you better start off by showing you’re a pleasant person — someone he and the rest of the brothers could introduce over a nicedinner.
“We hire people that you would gladly invite them to your homefor dinner,” Capó says. “That’s basically the rule of thumb — youwant to make sure they’re pleasant people, people that are goingto respect other people as well as respect you in the process.”
But just having dinner manners doesn’t cut the mustard entirely.If you want to hire a winner, you also better look for someone whohas the professional credentials. That means you should take hisor her resume with a grain of salt.
“When you’re in the interviewing process, people will tell youanything or everything you want to hear,” Capó says. “Theresume, the same thing. Now, with the Internet, you don’t seeas much of the people physically, and they put a bunch of stuffin there that they’ve done and most of the stuff they put inthere, it’s not necessarily true.”
To vet their professionalism, Capó notes that the devil is in thedetails.
“We do an interview, and the person is called to be here at 9 inthe morning, if the person comes at 9:01, we probably would notsee him again,” he says. “If you call us and say, ‘I’m sorry I’m late’or whatever, that’s fine, I will wait for you until the end of time.When they fill out an application, there are instructions, and weactually look at everything, the way they fill out the applicationand if they give all the information, and you start to get a profileof that person. I mean sometimes people come in to us for a jobin sales and you come in in the morning with them in the elevator, and they don’t know who you are, and they don’t even say hior good morning, they don’t smile, it’s like, what are you doinghere?
“I’ve had people come in here for executive jobs in jeans and T-shirts … and you say, ‘How do I eat this; what is going on here?’”
These simple tests, in conjunction with your normal hiring practices, act to help you flesh out someone’s attention to detail andprofessionalism, which is the first step in making a hire who willcare about your company.
