IQ Interview: I Love Rewards Inc. (one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers)
By Bruce Powell
They used to struggle with poor morale, bad hiring and employee retention woes. Now I Love Rewards Inc., one of North America’s leading incentive marketing companies receives over 2700 resumes for only 13 openings (more applicants per role than Google!)
We interview Razor Suleman, CEO, and Jamie Danziger, Senior VP to hear their thoughts (and Top 8 Tips) on how ILR attracts and hires A-level talent.
IQ: Does I Love Rewards have a unique ‘people’ strategy?
ILR: Absolutely. Our number one objective at I Love Rewards is to recruit, retain, and inspire great people. We truly believe that you have to get the people side of your business right before you can start to service clients and go about doing business. Without the right people in place, you’ll never be able to reach the levels of success that you set out to achieve. We make recruiting a fundamental part of our corporate strategy – we don’t ask if we can afford to or not, the real question is can we afford NOT to? The answer is no.
IQ: What are the key steps in the ILR hiring process?
ILR: We’ve designed a unique hiring process where we feel each step is very important, and includes and relies on many of our own employees for it to be successful. We’re very formulaic in our approach, always analyzing metrics, and know very early on in the process whether we’re on track to have those great people to choose from in the end. Through research and analysis, we now know the best places to advertise or cast our net so to speak, to reach the best candidates – and this will vary depending on the position we’re hiring for.
1. Experience Nights / Panel Interviews
Those who submit resumes are initially invited into our office for an ‘Experience Night’ where they get a chance to see our office, and meet members of our team. During this initial visit, each candidate will sit down for a quick 5-10 minute interview with one of our employees. They get asked three ‘fit’ questions and then based on that, our employee determines whether they will move on to the group interview stage. The group stage consists of 90 minute interview sessions where two of our employees will interview approximately twelve candidates, asking the same five questions to each - typically we’ll have five groups of twelve for each position we’re recruiting for. One note - we've learned through experience that the Experience Nights and panel interviews aren't as effective with certain positions, so for more senior level roles for example, we'll still use more raditional interviewing methods. We definitely always tailor the interview process to the position we're hiring for.
2. Case Study
Our interviewers will then pick the best 1-2 people from each group who they feel deserve to move on to the next round where each candidate will prepare and present a case study. It’s only at this stage that we begin to look at the resumes of the remaining candidates. For the case study stage, each candidate is given an hour to present where they are scored on six criteria.
3. Topgrading1 Interview
The top 2-4 from the case study stage then move onto the final Topgrading round which consists of a modified Topgrading interview. In the end we ask ourselves ‘Is this person great?’ and ‘Do they raise the calibre of our existing level?’. If there’s any wavering or uncertainty then we either eliminate them or bring them back in again for another interview.
What makes this process work, besides the requirement of being a standout to make it to the end, are the multiple opinions we get on each candidate and the debriefing that takes place. Sometimes one person’s judgment can be a bit off, but very rarely will ten people’s judgment all be off. In addition, by meeting and receiving approval from so many different people within the company, we’re almost guaranteed that the cultural fit will be great as well. Usually by the end, there’s a fairly unanimous decision on who the right candidate is.
We think we’ve fine-tuned things and have a very good system in place now. If a hire doesn’t work out, it’s usually because we’ve failed the process and not put our trust in it; it’s not that the process itself has failed.
IQ: What do you do different in your recruiting process than most other companies?
ILR: The biggest thing we do different now is to look at recruiting as a marketing endeavour instead of as an operations function like we did before. We look to promote ourselves in the market and connect with job seekers just as we aim to connect with potential customers and generate sales leads.
As well, we get our own employees much more involved in the hiring and recruiting process than most companies. Again, your own employees are going to be your best advocates and care most about the people joining the team. Also, it gives our employees the opportunity to work on something that is quite different from their normal workday and expand their learning. As an added bonus, it actually helps a great deal with our own employee retention because seeing what other candidates have to go through first-hand makes our employees value their jobs and know that we see great things in them.
IQ: How have your hiring practices evolved over time?
ILR: Much of our current success in hiring actually stems from being so poor at it in the past. It’s almost like we had to hit rock bottom to truly realize who we wanted to be and how we were going to get there. And in a sense that’s exactly what we did. There was a point where employees were constantly leaving – we lost 40% of our staff three summers ago, morale was low, and even senior management didn’t want to be there some days.
We kept asking ourselves what was THE one thing that was going to be critical to the success of our business going forward. And we realized it was our people!
From that point, we set out and created a Vision document stating exactly who it was we wanted to be. At first we lost people who weren’t onboard with things, but slowly and surely we started building ourselves up with the RIGHT people. We revamped our hiring process from the ground up to attract and find the top people available, and we’re still constantly tweaking it to always make it better.
IQ: What differentiates I Love Rewards to prospective candidates?
ILR: Much of what differentiates I Love Rewards and ultimately attracts the amount of candidates we now get can be attributed to the unique and prominent employer brand that we’ve built up - the main message being that we’re a people-first organization.
There’s just a certain vibe about I Love Rewards that you can feel as soon as you walk into our office.
Part of it is that we make everything our own. Lots of companies also do some of the things we do, but none do it the same way – we always put our own spin on things.
Other companies have drinks on Fridays, but we have our very own RedPoint lounge (aptly named after our company drink of the same name) where we socialize and enjoy drinks together after work on Fridays. We know of other companies who have short daily meetings, but our TTP (To The Point) daily meetings are uniquely ours. An employer brand is all-encompassing and we’re always trying to do more to add to that so that our current employees, as well as those considering applying to I Love Rewards see that we truly value our employees and want them to love working here. From giving everyone a minimum of four weeks vacation to start, to ‘Patio Passes’ in the summer, we think giving more helps us get more back in return.
IQ: What do you do to spread the great employer brand you’ve built?
ILR: Once again, for us it all starts with our own people. We over-communicate our message to our own employees to ensure that everyone knows exactly what it is we stand for and what we’re all about.
After all, if you’re doing the right things then your own employees will always be your biggest advocates.
We count on them to spread our story and tell their contacts and friends about us. For this to work though, you have to make sure you’re giving people something to talk about and share, and we think all the unique little things we do allow for that. We also make a point of treating everyone we come into contact with well. Not only is this just another part of who we are, but you also never know who somebody knows, and who they’ll pass along our story to. Someone might not be a great fit for our company, but because we treated them well, they might suggest using us to their next employer or pass along our story to friends and colleagues. We've had instances where candidates that we've said no to refer us other candidates and sales leads - We think that says alot.
IQ: What do you plan to do differently in the future?
ILR: It’s not so much that we plan to do much differently, but we do want to follow the process we have established more strictly. The rare occasions hires haven’t worked out have been because we deviated from the system. ‘Maybe’ is a no. Hire the right person, not just because you need to fill a position. Also this time, we are trying to be more proactive, so identifying all our hiring requirements and doing the necessary planning up front. We’ll constantly adjust things if we feel a certain part of the process can be done better, but we’re quite happy with where we’ve gotten our hiring and recruiting efforts to.
I Love Rewards’ Top 8 Tips to Hiring A-level Talent:
- Get the people side of your business right first – make the decision to be ‘great’ – and only hire people who support that.
- Have a strategy for each position you’re hiring for. Know who you’re looking for first - then determine where to ‘cast your net’. Tailor the Interview process to suit the position.
- There are no shortcuts. Give your recruiting process the necessary time and effort it requires. Turn it into a ‘science’ and measure your metrics.
- Build your employment brand – it helps to attract candidates. Approach your recruitment efforts like a sophisticated marketing campaign. It’s the same process as gathering sales leads.
- Get as many people from your organization involved as possible in the hiring process. While it does take them away from their “real” jobs, it improves the process and results – and dramatically increases retention.
- Over-communicate your story to your employees so it’s ingrained in them – your own employees will always be your best ambassadors.
- Treat everyone you come in contact with graciously - unsuccessful candidates can become customers in the future or pass along your story to friends and colleagues.
- NEVER compromise on a hire, a “maybe” is a no. Hire the right person and don’t choose someone because you need to fill a position.
1 Topgrading is a unique interview approach popularized by Bradford Smart, PhD.
- Bruce Powell, Managing Partner, established IQ PARTNERS as an integrated HR services company - providing a broader range of services to help entrepreneurial companies better manage their people resources.
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