The Make or Break of 15 Minutes in Business
The average candidate interview, online or live, takes 15 to 20 minutes. Fact. Skilled recruiters will tell you that within the first 7 minutes of the interview, they will have summed up the personality profile of the candidate as being relevant or irrelevant for the job spec on the table. But, while recruiters are analysing, scrutinizing, deleting, inserting and cheerleading these target-pointers in their minds, there is something else happening on the other side of the table. Just what exactly is going on for the candidate during these 15 minutes; seated nervously on the firing line, observing their interviewer and anticipating their questions? What is the candidate thinking, feeling, even judging? The answer – a lot!
When it comes to this first impression, the candidate may be the one in question, but so is the recruiter; so is the HR Manager, so is the CEO, so is anybody sitting on the side of a brand. Your brand.
While recruiters spend years training to cherry pick the best person for a job, we often forget that as human beings we are innately wired to size each other up. It’s part of our natural instinct, and its happening at every touch point in an organisation. The so-called interview is no different to any other day-to-day engagement in any company. No matter whether an interaction takes place at front desk reception, or between the warehouse packers or with the tea lady or the Ops director, the truth is, people notice.
This was precisely the case with long-time mogul brand, Virgin Media, that was slandered by a candidate for receiving an uncomfortable interview and ‘poor’ treatment, lashing out on social media that she would never engage with the brand again, purely on principle. The ricochet of this resulted in the candidate’s sister, her family and her network also declaring a boycott against the brand, thereby cancelling their subscriptions with Virgin Media. The company reportedly lost an annual return of $5m that year.
It goes without saying: the candidate is still a customer, the supplier is still a customer and the employee is still a customer – and, incidentally, the Virgin debacle has less to do with the power of social media and more to do with the power of a brand’s touchpoints. If 15 minutes is all it takes to make or break a customer experience, then why are businesses not including this as part of their market share strategies; as part of their induction processes; as part of their company culture?
The downturn of the 15-minute touchpoint strategy, starts with poor communication within an organisation. This extends to verbal communication and nonverbal communication, internally or externally. Impact is either made or missed, based on ‘the how’ of the communicator. And who will teach this ‘how’? The leader of course. When leaders refrain from articulating to their employees the importance – and the difference – between customer experience as opposed to customer transaction, this can result in a misaligned workforce; one that lacks communication skills, which in turn dilutes the touchpoint engagement, which in turn abolishes the potential for impact.
For some business leaders, communication is not considered a functional tool of impact, but rather a means ‘just to get things done.’ These leaders often view communication as the delegation of tasks and micromanagement, the signing off of proposals, the odd email, and a meeting on rare occasion. According to researchers, 60% of companies do not have long-term strategies for internal communication which in turn hinders impact. This can easily display negatively to the world beyond the
If an employee is not clear on the company impact-goals, the company runs the risk of cultivating a disengaged workforce, internally and externally – and a disengaged employee can cost the company 34% of their salary, what more if an entire team is disengaged? Implementing a 15-minute mindset inside an organisation supports a conscious collective culture that puts people at the forefront of a business, no matter the person, the moment, the conversation or the task.
By encouraging micro-moments of impact-awareness, employees (and leaders) will ultimately harness ownership to their actions as they begin to feel their work makes a difference. Clearly when it comes to building a brand reputation, the difference matters. When we learn that the impact we make, lives long after the push-button glass doors, we come to appreciate that business is never finite – it’s a living, breathing, communicative lifecycle, ignited and empowered only by the people that make it so.
(Can you even imagine how the Virgin Media story might have unfolded if the candidate felt welcomed, heard, and encouraged?)
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