You Get What You Screen For

From the Boulder Daily Camera, May 5, 2008

I needed to make some copies, so I dashed over to the copy shop and copied and collated until I was burnt out by the experience, then met my friend for a glass of wine.

As I was paying for the wine, I realized I didn't have my credit card.

"Yikes!" I thought. I'd left my card in the copy machine when I'd made all those copies.

Back to the copy shop I went. I stood in line and waited my turn to ask the young man behind the counter for my lost credit card.

Finally, it was my turn, and I approached the counter and started to speak.

"Not yet," said the gentleman attending customers. "I'm helping someone else."

I didn't see anyone else -- no one besides me and the people standing behind me in line, waiting for service. A woman appeared from behind the greeting-card rack. "It's OK," she said, "I'll wait."

"No," said the man behind the counter. "She can wait."

He thrust his chin in my direction. Whoa nelly, I thought. I guess the woman had stood in line earlier and needed a bit more help at this point. That's fine. No problem there. The unspeakable rudeness of the gentleman was the problem.

He had on a tie -- I guess that makes him a manager. Another gentleman eventually arrived to locate my missing card.

I thought back to my 18 million years training people in customer-service skills, and the catch phrases, "If you don't mind," "So sorry, I won't be a minute" and "Thanks for your patience" that come in handy at a time like this.

On the drive home, I remembered that the copy shop uses extensive testing in its pre-employment screening. I've seen about every big-company pre-employment test there is (thanks to Camera readers and others who know of my geeky interest in such things), and I've seen this copy shop's tests -- and they're extensive.

They're taken online at the start of the application process. They measure a job seeker's math and analytical skills. They measure his or her logical skills.

What they don't touch is interpersonal communication -- no questions like, "Which one of these responses is the best choice when a customer is unhappy with our service?"

It's no wonder the guy with the tie at the copy shop was no fun to deal with -- the company isn't hiring for so-called "soft skills."

Now the tie guy is a manager himself -- who do you think he'll be hiring? As employers, we get what we screen for.

If we focus on math and logic, that's what we'll get in our new hires. I'm not sure that I would emphasize quantitative skills to the exclusion of customer-service abilities in a high-volume, customer-facing environment, but each employer gets to pick its own priorities.

If the customers get miffed from time to time, or even every time, at least the help will know what 45 percent of 1,865 is -- and obviously, that's somebody's fondest wish.