Hiring Friendly

This past week I was in Myrtle Beach, SC for speaking gig and got to spend some alone time with my wife.  It was my first trip ever to Myrtle Beach.  Here’s my assessment:

  • It’s hard to knock any place that is on the Ocean. Beautiful sand and water.
  • That being said…Myrtle Beach is Jersey Shore South – arcades, cheap beach crap stores and carnival food.  I was somewhat surprised there weren’t signs that said “Welcome to the Guido Vacation Capital of the World!”
  • Oh, and there’s a bunch of golf courses.
  • I saw more dolphins in one place than I’ve ever seen anywhere else.

Here’s the other thing they have – Chick fil a restaurants!  My close friends know this is a weakness I have.  Look I know they don’t like gays, and that upsets me.  It doesn’t upset me enough to stop eating their crack-like chicken sandwiches, but to prove my displeasure with their stance of the gay community, I refuse to purchase their waffle fries. So there!

The one thing Chick fil a does exceptionally well, besides chicken sandwiches, is hiring ridiculously friendly people.  No, you have no idea.  I’ve been to Chick fil a restaurants in countless states.  The one thing I can always count on is the fact that someone will take my order that seems way to happy to be working at a fast food restaurant.  I want to speak with Chick fil a’s HR team to find out what kind of screening they do to hire such friendly folks!

People need to stop concentrating on what Google is doing in HR and start looking into Chick fil a.  I can’t think of one other organization that does this so well, not even the folks at Disney.  If I had to guess Chick fil a probably has gone to only one screener type question:

Is this person ridiculously friendly and happy about life?

Who cares about skills! Just hire super friendly people and your customers will put up with almost anything.  It’s something we don’t want to admit in HR about selection, especially in service type industries, but friendliness might be the most important competency any hire needs to be successful.

If anyone has a contact at Chick fil a please let me know, I now want to know the truth.  How do they hire the nicest people ever?

2 thoughts on “Hiring Friendly

  1. Haha, I love this. But friendly customer service really is magic, isn’t it? I decided a long time ago that I would always fight to have DirecTV if I can because of their incredible customer service team…I actually don’t DREAD calling them (unlike some others I know…) and that makes a huge, huge difference. We can all learn a lot from great service 🙂

  2. They aren’t actually like that when their hired, it’s something in the chicken…. southern charm with a side o serotonin in the grease!

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