Arch + Tower partnered with a farmer-direct coffee supply company that sources exceptional product while fostering intentional relationships. They ensure every purchase supports a farmer and partner directly at the source. Their farmers are involved in the supply-chain process from the beginning, when the coffee seed is planted, to when the beans are exported. This company supplies wholesale coffee to large restaurant chains while also selling from their own retail location(s).
Arch + Tower Business Value.
Built job trait benchmarks for key roles to better match job needs with employee talent
Achieved efficiency for selection and hiring process
Increased insights and clarity with prospective candidates, reducing risk
We Listen.
Most companies understand their big goals, but it’s often difficult to express those in precise ways. This is especially true when understanding what employee traits and skills are needed for their operation. In the absence of extreme clarity about what a company needs in a particular job role, leaders often hire people they like. Many times, the candidate fails to accomplish the needs of the company. This is what our client was hoping to avoid when they opened their first retail store. They wanted to hire individuals in their stores who could most naturally exhibit the brand’s preferred behavioral values. In addition, the company’s leadership team wanted to take some of the guesswork out of an already stressful process.
The beginning stages of this strategy prompted Arch + Tower to:
Establish four, unique job role benchmarks for the critical roles in the retail stores
Select an assessment that illuminates the needed insights
Align retail leaders around the core traits and values of an ideal employee
Offer enriched interview questions based on benchmark gap analysis
Create an objective, unbiased process that causes greater job fit
We Understand.
Before creating a job benchmark, the hiring managers must first agree. This is absolutely critical. It’s common for hiring managers to assume they agree on a needed personality style for a job role. Managers don’t realize they’re not aligned until a facilitator asks them to prioritize a trait at the same time. Often, they answer completely opposite. For this reason, the benchmarking process must first start with aligning hiring managers to the needed traits.
From there, thinking about the needs of the job role, we work to build the ideal candidate profile. We ask ourselves: if the ideal candidate was completing this task, how would they do it?
We Focus.
We take the guesswork out of hiring important job roles. The goal of any benchmark is to create gaps between the (ideal) benchmark and the (real) candidate, so that interview questions can be tailored to explore how the candidate covers gaps with their learned skills and experiences.
“We need a person who does X, and I’m seeing you may do it differently. What skills have you developed to help you when X may not come as naturally to you?
Asking questions that provide helpful insights into specific job fit can revolutionize a selection process and reduce hiring mistakes.
We Solve.
This client’s team now knows exactly who they need. Benchmarking reduced the amount of anxiety and guessing when getting to know new candidates. This process also created a more fair and equitable process by removing biases that may not be related to job fit. Hiring and selection is hard enough, and with a benchmarking process that makes interviewing candidates much easier, hiring managers can focus on the other critical needs of the business.
