You can develop skills, you can gain knowledge and experience - but it “really does come down to attitude”
Xero Australia have revealed a sneaky recruiting tactic to ensure a potential employee fits the company's culture.
The managing director of Xero, Trent Innes, said he will not hire anyone who doesn't offer to take their coffee cup back to the kitchen after he interviews them.
Innes said in The Venture Podcast it was an easy way to ensure the potential employee fits the company's culture of ownership and displayed “a good attitude”.
“If you do come in and have an interview, as soon as you come in and meet me, I will always take you for a walk down to one of our kitchens and somehow you always end up walking away with a drink,” said Innes.
“Then we take that back, have our interview, and one of the things I'm always looking for at the end of the interview is, does the person doing the interview want to take that empty cup back to the kitchen?
Innes added that you can develop skills, you can gain knowledge and experience but it “really does come down to attitude”.
“The attitude that we talk a lot about is the concept of "wash your own coffee cup",” he said.
“So, what I was trying to find was what was the lowest level task I could find that regardless of what you did inside the organisation was still super important that would actually really drive a culture of ownership.
“If you come into the office one day inside Xero, you'll see the kitchens are almost always clean and sparkling and it's very much off that concept of wash your coffee cup, but that sort of led into the interview space.”
Innes also saiid that it’s important to make sure you've got people who have a real sense of ownership.
“Attitude and ownership scale, especially in a really fast-growing environment like we've been going through and still at this stage as well,” Innes told Lambros Photios.
It’s particularly important to ensure there’s people who have a “real, strong ownership” and a growth mindset, he said.
“It's really just making sure that they're actually going to fit into the culture inside Xero, and really take on everything that they should be doing.”
Xero will be featuring on a panel discussion at the upcoming HR Summit Melbourne. To register, click here!
