Darren McGarvie: Employees should know and live their firm's brand values

Darren McGarvie

There is another important aspect of hiring the right people that you could be overlooking - brand values.

Every organisation should be actively working on their brand and have brand values set. Your brand values are all about your differentiation and how you choose to operate as a business. They should be at the core of all your decisions and every person in your organisation should not only know your values but espouse and live them every day.

So if you don't have your brand values identified you will be behind your competition. Take some time to look at what your company offers and come up with values that reflect how you operate and how you want to be known. Then make sure every touch point you have with potential or existing customers reflects these values.

Your brand values must help you in your hiring decisions. This will help shape your organisational culture and any new employees will fit and match this.

One leading example worldwide of using a hiring policy to help enforce their brand is Zappos, an online shop and clothing store in the US. In less than 10 years, Zappos hit $1 billion in annual sales and debuted at number 23 on Fortune's Top 100 companies to work for.

CEO Tony Hsieh has said "Our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff - like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers - will happen naturally on its own."

So how do they use this philosophy in hiring? They conduct two very different type of interviews. The first is run by the hiring manager and his/her team looking for experience, technical ability, fit within the team, etc. The second interview is then done by Human Resources and focuses on culture fit. Potential hires have to pass both interviews to be successful.

Zappos knows that in using brand values to hire people they have turned away very talented people that could have increased turnover in the short-term.

But they also understand that if an employee doesn't fit their values in the long term it can do damage to their overall brand.

-Darren McGarvie is the chairman of the Rotorua X Charitable Trust and director of McGarvie Business Coaching. To find out more go to www.facebook.com/rotoruax or email rotoruax@gmail.com