Stan Garber is the President at Scout RFP. He sets the marketing and growth strategy. Follow him @ScoutRFP.
Recently, YEC spoke with Stan about his employee management and company culture experience. His best advice is below.
What interview question do you always ask potential hires and why?
I always ask potential hires, “Do you have a good sense of our history and what Scout RFP does?” Candidates’ answers to this question give me a sense of how much research they did before the interview, how quickly they are able to understand the company profile (which is especially important when hiring sales people) and whether they are honest. If a potential hire hasn’t done his or her research before the interview, I can always tell based on how clear the answers to this question are.
What makes your company culture unique?
Scout is a family, and we recruit very carefully to preserve that. You need to hire A-players — motivated and curious folks who will drive and push the whole organization forward. That’s very important. But you also need to hire people who you’ll want to spend most of your day with. We’re all in it together here, and we want everyone to feel that way. We eat lunch together; we work hard together; we celebrate together; we cry together — and we couldn’t do it without each person on the team.
How can you make sure team outings or activities appeal as best they can to all employees?
Cultivate a tight-knit team that operates effortlessly together instead of breaking off into siloed groups (whether by age, department, etc.). Outside of regular happy hours, make sure to organize other activities that get everyone together outside the office. Because we have satellite offices across the U.S. and in Europe, we like to get everyone together in San Francisco once a year for a few days so that the team can bond and interact face-to-face.
What’s your best tip for keeping a personal touch to onboarding and training as you grow?
Give everyone access to the executives. For instance, we have one of our co-founders meet with every single employee during his or her onboarding process to go over company culture. This gives us a chance to get to know every single employee and vice versa. Investing 30 minutes for a sit down with each new hire can have a long-term impact on the team dynamic as a whole.
What’s one quick, easy way any company at any stage can invest in their company culture?
Buy lunch once a week for everyone in the office. A lot of great bonding and idea sharing can happen over lunch. Also, do a regular weekly check-in video call to keep everyone connected and up to speed.
