We recently on May 6th shared a message about having hired a far more experienced Operations Manager. Please review that, if you have not yet done so. We are pleased to share here our plan to begin using The Predictive Index (PI) as part of our process for hiring our Laundry Service Professionals. You can learn more about the PI at https://www.predictiveindex.com. It has been in use for over 65 years. It is designed to improve hiring practices by assessing the key behavioral and cognitive drivers that determine what people are good at and what drives relationship dynamics in the workplace.
Unlike resumes that primarily address a person’s past, the PI is forward looking. It will enable us to create a personality profile for the Laundry Services Professional role (analogous to a job description, but focused on required personality traits) that summarizes the key traits we believe are essential in the best people for this role. Candidates will take the five minute online survey that will inform us of whether they appear to be a good fit for the role even before we move to a formal discussion and interview.
Of course, this is not fool proof, as people will know the job for which they are applying before taking the survey, and can attempt to answer according to what they think we want to hear. But, PI has a 65 year track record of success in this field for a reason.
Please allow us to close this communication by explaining why we are making a substantial, annual, recurring, capital investment in licensing a tool traditionally used by much larger companies. We went to great lengths when we launched in 2018 to have and create the best people, best software package for tracking customer preferences, and most thorough and detailed operational processes, all put in place to help assure that we could scale and maintain attention to detail as we grew. Hiring to meet demand and training new people at a healthy physical distance in the Covid era gave us a crash course in realizing that some personality types are resistant to adhering to the detailed procedures, processes, checklists, redundancies, and communications methodologies we had put in place. These only matter if we hire people who follow, adhere to, and use them. Hence, we are attempting to close a gap that has existed in our organization by matching the people with the role.
Like most businesses, we are not perfect. We can only strive to continually learn faster and improve our performance. We hope both our current and future customers, and our residential and business customers alike, will recognize and appreciate that this is another example of how we strive to provide the best service possible. We are essentially hiring on behalf of the customers we serve. Our investment in the PI will help us further improve our performance.
Very sincerely yours,
Michael Gralnick
Co-Owner
Marin Wash and Fold