Why your recruiting methods should be as unique as your brand

When Hollywood directors cast a superstar they count on two things, box office draw and the professional actors ability to act, by which I mean the ability to stop being Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlize Theron or Jim Carey and instead become the three dimensional living embodiment of someone else. Watch Capote, Monster or Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events and you will see the incredible transformations these actors make in their own personalities to literally become the character, even gaining or losing huge amounts of weight to ensure a complete and congruent representation.

Now think about your own employees, especially those who spend the most time touching customers. How willing (or capable) are they of completely transforming their bodies, minds, souls and personalities into the ideal personification of your brand?

I'm sure you would agree that most are not capable of these radical transformations and that even if they were, they would be unwilling to spend huge parts of their lives pretending to be someone they are not. Radical transformation requires enormous energy, rare talent and is highly stressful. Counting on radical transformation in each of your people is not the formula for creating consistent, positive, scalable customer experiences.

Instead let me suggest that you use a technique well known to the directors of high school musicals and local theatre companies...type casting. Type casting means that you put someone into the role who is already the character! There will be little acting required because they live and breathe the character everyday just by being themselves. Their thoughts are the characters' thoughts. Their beliefs are the characters' beliefs. Their actions are the characters' actions.

In the high school musical, for example, the prom queen is cast as the damsel in distress who mesmerizes all of the men, the school jerk is cast as the antagonist and the captain of the sports team is cast as the hero who will save the beauty. The result?  A very successful play! Why? Because very little acting is required to ensure a consistent, predictable and believable outcome.

Using type casting to hire people who will naturally reflect your brand is a simple and proven method that ensures your people will behave as the natural extension of your brand at every touch point. To be sure, hiring to your brand requires that you are already clear about your brand's positioning and have defined the brand personality you want to project in the marketplace. Let's look at how some great brand builders have used type casting to extend their brand to the front line.

Read the rest of Rick Barrera's article "Hiring to your Brand: Why your recruiting methods should be as unique as your brand" to get real world examples of companies that hire to their brand, and why it works for them.