Zappos Tells New Employees: Please Go Away

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  jhipsky05/22/08 Report as spam
  1

  Cat out of the bag

  Granted that the 10% of the people who take the money probably won't ever read this but, making that kind of practice public could reduce its effectiveness and attract people who need a grand or two over a week.

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  fttmeditator05/22/08 Report as spam
  2

  But It Could Be A Cool Way To "Bob" the Cat!

  The gist of this BNET posting is to better access committed employees so what Zappo may very well have struck on is a two-fold success; (1) craft the incoming profile of potential employees who are committed and those who would be the 10% to bail out giving Zappo HR insight that goes way beyond resumes and (2) begin to move the bar of success in Zappo's environment in the positive direction thereby raising their success factor all the more. Cool!
  
  FTT

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  Orginalnaplx05/22/08 Report as spam
  3

  RE: Zappos Tells New Employees: Please Go Away

  good way to see who wants 2 be in it 4 the long run

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  Robin77705/22/08 Report as spam
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  Gimmick

  This is a gimmick. Wait until the unemployment rate in Las Vegas declines and see if Zappos continues this.
  
  Paying people to go sounds like a neat trick, but it really indicates that the company lacks confidence in its hiring, training and management practices. A better tactic is to make customer service people feel that so important the company can?t do without them. That strategy has been the most effective anywhere.

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  LisaGreim05/22/08 Report as spam
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  I Think They Do That Too

  Watch the video for some examples.

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  ndlicht105/22/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Zappos Tells New Employees: Please Go Away

  Frankly, if you deploy a traits assessment prior to hiring, you wont have to weed people out - its more reliable and a lot less expensive as well.
  
  Its simple- do a behavioral traits assessment on the top performers. That's a behavioral traits assessment, NOT PERSONALITY traits assessment. This reveals precisely what traits your top performers have regarding how and why they are so good at what they6 do FOR YOU in YOUR JOB SETTING. Revealing this creates accurate hiring measurements for success at your job, not general success at the type of job you are offering. It also facilitates a scientific job match process for finding a top performer who will flourish in thew job and stay long term.
  
  Use the assessment results as a benchmark. There are some excellent on line tools available for accomplishing this process, running potential hires through the assessment on line and clearly measuring them against the benchmark. The results reveal what can not be seen in interviews - whats under the tip of the iceberg of that person, their core values and behavioral traits. No on the job testing or validating needed!
  
  Now hire against it. You'll spend a lot less on paying new hires to leave because most will be perfectly matched to the job and deliver amazingly well on the job.
  
  Neil Licht
  answers@ucanpreventbadhires.com

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  llambert05/22/08 Report as spam
  7

  Caution on treating testing as the answer

  While testing is a highly valid way of predicting performance on the job, there are two things of concern in this post.
  
  First, there is no such thing as a behavioural "trait". A trait is an enduring hereditary factor such as a personality variable (eg. extraversion). You can test for certain behavioural tendencies and this is a valid thing to do but what concerns me is that if you are using this terminology you are perhaps mis-understanding (and mis-using?) certain tests.
  
  The second point is that, at best, psych tests predict less than 40% of the variability in performance on the job. That is about as good a prediction as you'll get from any test, so using additional means to ascertain the behaviours & importantly, the attidutes and motivations of potential employees is highly advisable.

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  Karen J.05/24/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Zappos Tells New Employees: Please Go Away

  I think the headline is misleading - it sounds to me like Zappo's is really saying "It's OK to go away, if this job isn't a good fit for you" rather than "Please! go away!"
  
  Personally, if I had found (and gotten) my Dream Job at Zappo's Call Center, I'd rather keep it than take a cash buyout, and start the job hunt all over again!
  If it turns out, after the rubber hits the road, that it's really NOT my dream job, for whatever reason, the $1000 gives me permission to say so out loud to HR, and encouragement to go ahead and keep looking.
  
  The fear of "letting-the-cat-out-of-the-bag" is, presumably, mitigated by many other parts of the pre-employment process - those who are clearly only there for the $grand (and don't otherwise fit the profile and the culture - "tested for" or not) shouldn't have made it that far, anyway.
  
  Considering the much-discussed cost of unhappy or unmotivated front-line CS workers, I think this is brilliant! You have a fixed, budgetable cost (~$10,000 per 100 new hires) to purging the inevitable hiring/accepting mistakes; everyone still there for Week 2 is determined to do a great job - even if only to justify to themselves why they *didn't* take the money and run; and former employees still have a very positive impression of the company (and remember, they "tell 3 friends, and they tell 3 friends...". It's really viral job-marketing!)
  
  Win-Win-Win!
  
  Karen J.

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  LisaGreim05/26/08 Report as spam
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  That's it exactly

  Given what a PITA the job hunt is, finding a good one is worth way more than a thousand dollars.