Hire the right people. You don’t get
to try people out for a year. How
you staff is a critical part of putting together a successful organization that has continuity and
can work together as a team.
We’re not in a hurry to fill every
spot. We’d rather do it right.
In our reference checking, we
ask some pointed questions
about accountability, teamwork,
customer focus, other people
focus, employee focus. There
are ways we ask that, interestingly enough, even people who
mean to endorse their candidate, they sometimes pause
over those questions, and that
can be telling at times.
What most people do is assign
that to a junior HR person who
goes through a list — would you
rehire them, can you recommend them, would you say this
person has integrity? The problem with those questions is, it’s
too easy to say, ‘Yes, no, yes,
they’re fine, they’re great,’ and
you don’t get into it.
So the questions are more open-ended and designed to have conversation — not yes-no answers.
Strengthen your hiring process. If you’re not careful with the
selection process, it’s difficult
to maintain the environment
you want. We have a verification process that requires some
redundancy, so the store manager would not add a staff manager without an assistant manager or district manager’s
involvement.
When you add a second layer
of verification, it adds another
layer of strength and credibility
to the process. That causes
people to slow down. If the system is really strong, it makes it
easier for a manager to make a
strong decision.
By having a set of high
standards that people have to
go by, the system becomes self-policing and self-fulfilling.
HOW TO REACH: Taco Bueno Restaurants LP, (972) 919-4800 or www.tacobueno.com