Christian Idiodi: evaluation

Transcript context

…Oh, boy. I tell the example of solving a problem when I was at a staffing company, a snag job. They do hourly jobs and help people find their best job or an hourly job and I actually get a call here from the head of Global staffing at Starbucks. Now, he called me, you can see the benefit of this technique, because I'm the person he calls when he has problems. I've used this technique with him at a previous company. He didn't even know I was at a new company. And he calls me up and he says, "Christian, I have a problem." I said, "Well, don't we all have problems?" He said, well, "We just bought a bakery in the San Francisco Bay Area. And as we're doing the paperwork to kind of take over this company or this acquisition, we realized that close to 800 of the employees may be undocumented workers." And I said, "Wow, that does sound like a problem." He's like, "Yeah, imagine if this breaks out in the news and all of that. But more importantly, we still need to get all their paperwork. So all these people are going to quit and we'll have a new bakery without employees." And my first question to him as a product guy is like, "Wow, would you give me a million dollars to solve this problem?" And it's like, "No, seriously?" I was like, "300,000." I'm throwing out numbers. He's like, "Maybe." I said, "Wow, you have my attention." I go to my CEO, I tell him to call. I grab a designer and an engineer. I just say, "Hey look, I would love to work on a little project with you all if you have some time." I kind of debrief them on the call. Now the first thing I have to do is to try to define the problem, identify problems. What really is the problem going on? Yeah, we're breaking it down, we're talking through this. We say, well, at the end of the day, Starbucks needs to hire like 800 people quickly because we can't fix getting everybody's paperwork. But they're going to lose these people and they need to hire those quickly. And I say, well, who else has this problem? We're trying to throw out guesses. I'm like, "What are we talking about? Let's go out." Everybody jumps in my car and we start driving around and this is where we're doing our product work from. We're talking in the car, just out of the building. We see a new construction site for a new McDonald's coming soon and we're curious. We're like, well, "Let's go find out." We start talking to people on sites. Fortunately, the operations director is on site and we ask him, we say, tell us about opening up a new McDonald's. He says, "Well, do you know we need like 120 people on opening day?" We're like, "Whoa, for McDonald's? Really, 120 people?" He's like, "Yeah, do you know that most of the people in this industry don't show up to work on the very first day, and every day we're in construction, we're losing money. So the second the bathrooms, the restrooms, are done, we want to open up." We're like, "Wow, we didn't think about this, new construction, a new store opening." re in construction, we're losing money. So the second the bathrooms, the restrooms, are done, we want to open up." We're like, "Wow, we didn't think about this, new construction, a new store opening." They need to hire lots of people quickly. So I said, "Thank you very much." I gave him my business card, he gave me his. We jumped back in the car. We just kept driving. We went to the mall. We started talking to people there. We talked to a manager at Macy's and she said, "Oh look, we hire 20,000 people in the holiday season." We're like, "Macy's. " Yeah, it's like nights, weekend, shipping, stuff like this. We started hiring in the summer because of how painful it is. Now, all we're doing here is just validating that this is a real problem, like other people will have the problem. So we go back to the office, we're brainstorming, like, "How will someone even go about solving this problem?" We're thinking this was like, we're not really sure, but McDonald's guy was very desperate. I said, " I have his business card." We start throwing some ideas. So I called the McDonald's person and I said, "Look, you just met with us." He's like, "Yeah. We would love to help you solve the problem." He said, "Well, what do you have in mind?" I said, "We've been talking. What if we just sent you some people to interview. And if you like them, you'll hire them." He said, "That seems fairly easy." He's like, "How do I pay for this?" And we took a swag like, "Maybe you pay us for everybody that you hire." He was like, "Oh, I don't see much risk to that. This is great." I'm like, "Oh, okay." We have no sense of what to do. We are literally Googling, how do people find a job at McDonald's? We go to colleges, we are sticking up flyers. We are putting ads in the newspaper back then, we are looking at different techniques to try to get people into a funnel and interest by posting on Craigslist or things like that. At the end of the week, we get about 40 people that are interested to come to the interview. We're like, that feels good for our first try. We call the manager up and we say, "Look, on Monday we will send you 40 people to interview. This is great." Monday I take my designer, my engineer, we are on site with the manager. At nine o'clock, we expect three people to show up for interviews. Nobody shows up. 10 o'clock, another three, one person shows up. We got to the end of the day, less than 20 people show up. This man only has four or five people. We are like, "We suck this. This is terrible." We go to the manager, " Let's go and apologize for wasting your day and stuff." He starts to laugh. We're like, "What's going on?" He said, "Look, I forgot to tell you. Folks in this industry don't even show up to interviews. We are McDonald's, we pay minimum wage. People will leave us for 25 more cents an hour. They will leave us for a job that is one block closer to their house or less than a mile closer to their home." Now, the engineer is with us and he's thinking about it. It's like, this is really interesting. About half of the people showed up. He hired one in five. use or less than a mile closer to their home." Now, the engineer is with us and he's thinking about it. It's like, this is really interesting. About half of the people showed up. He hired one in five. If you really want to solve this problem, playing the laws of averages, we probably need to send this man close to 200 people. We need to go bigger. So we are storming the office, we called the McDonald's guy again. I was like, "Can we try again next Monday?" And he's like, "Do I only pay for the people I hire?" We're like, "Sure." It's like, "Oh, go ahead and kill yourself on this." It's a pain. We've been trying all kinds of things for years. Now, we start doubling down our efforts. We start calling back all the people that didn't show up for interviews like, "What's going on? Did you get lost? Don't you want a job? What's wrong with you?" We start figuring out what portals worked well for us the last time, what wasted our money, what was the cost to acquire a person. And we spend a week doubling our efforts on those channels. We probably have about 120, 130 people on the list. The Sunday beforehand, we start calling them up like, "Please show up. Don't embarrass us. Don't you want the job? Do you need that address? Should I call you a reminder, set your alarm." We're trying all the techniques to try to get more people. There we go the next day and at the end of the day he has about forty-five to 50 people. He comes to us, he shakes our hand. He's like, "Whoa, the quality was excellent. All my recruiters were engaged. The day was smooth," [inaudible 00:41:17] how successful we are. He's like, "I want to use you for every new McDonald's I open in the area." Now, I don't know I have a product. I just know I was able to help one person at McDonald's. But I feel like I have enough learning. So I called up my friend at Starbucks and I said, "Hey, man, remember the problem we talked the about?" He's like, "Yeah. I would love to help you solve it." He said, "Oh, okay. What do you have in mind?" I said, "Well, I think we need to send you about 3000 people to interview." He said, "3000 people? I told you I only need 800." I said, in this industry, most people don't show up for interviews, right? He said, "Oh my goodness. You know our industry well. I like this. I'm going to take this up, I think we'll give you this contract." I take my designer, my engineer, we go to San Francisco. We're out there recruiting because this is where it was based. We have to get a whole hotel, hire people. We are working all the channels we knew, working in the area. Remember, we don't have any software, no technology. The designer, we're doing this manually, Excel spreadsheets, phones, emails, in that way. In one week, Starbucks hired 784 people. I get an email the next Monday morning from the contact at Starbucks. He copied Howard Schultz, then CEO of Starbucks. The email read, "These guys just saved our butts." I sent it to my CEO, but then I said, "You know what?" I only know now I can help on McDonald's and a Starbucks, but that doesn't mean I have a product. But I now have enough of problem definition. I reached out to the head of marketing, the head of sales.…

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