Get the right people
Muzzillo has given up trying to find every single right characteristic in a potential leader.
“You know, I quit playing God a long time ago,” he says. “I used to think I knew. Now I can tell you what we’re not looking for.”
Instead, when it comes to finding a new leader of one of his franchises, he focuses on what he’s not looking for — someone with a criminal background or someone with bad credit. That’s it.
Like most things with Muzzillo, it’s pretty simple. Taking the approach of knowing what you don’t want in an employee can often be more worthwhile than trying to make sure someone has every characteristic that you could possibly conceive.
For example, Muzzillo has been absolutely amazed by some people who have joined Proforma as franchisors, but he probably wouldn’t have given them the time of day had he been looking for specific characteristics instead of what he doesn’t want. One man in particular put millions of dollars of profit into Proforma’s pockets before he retired, but Muzzillo questions whether he would have made the cut with a different approach.
“If you would have said come up five key ingredients and if people don’t have these five key ingredients, they can’t come in — he never would have made it,” he says. “Give them a shot. I’m not smart enough to be God.”
When hiring employees, Muzzillo relies partially on personality testing.
“You want to make sure they have a good fit for the position, … ” he says. “It’s a little bit of intelligence testing and a little bit of personality testing to make sure we’re putting the right people in the right spots.”
The intelligence testing addresses different questions centered on math and reading. The personality profile asks questions to candidates to understand them more. Questions include: Do you prefer to work in a group? Does it bother you to work in a group? And did you steal from a previous employer?
Prospective employees also go through a couple of interviews, often with the entire team that they’ll be joining because that team doesn’t let just anyone join its family.
In addition to the testing process and interviewing, Muzzillo also says there’s one other way to get to the heart of a person.
“There’s nothing like a woman’s intuition,” he says. “You know you have it or you don’t, and I don’t have it, and I’m not trying to be sexist, but I think women have an intuition that men don’t.”
While he doesn’t do much of the hiring these days, when he did, he would ask the receptionist what she thought of a particular candidate and actually relied half on testing and half on his receptionist’s intuition to make a decision.
“She would know,” he says. “‘You should see how he acted in the lobby waiting,’ or, ‘You should have seen how arrogant he was,’ or, ‘He wouldn’t even wear the name badge,’ or, ‘Man, what a great guy’ — they knew.”
Above all, take your time in hiring and focus on one position and one person at a time.
“We can grow one good person at a time,” he says. “One good staff person at a time and one good franchise owner at a time can create a really big thing. Really, our focus is just one good person at a time.”
