ARTICLES

1-800 Got Junk
HR Professional
By Eve Lazarus

Every morning at 10:55, dozens of employees gather on the second floor of 1-800-Got-Junk? at Granville Island, in Vancouver, for the daily five minute huddle. It’s a little disarming for a visitor—one minute you’re in an empty space, the next a football flies above your head and, in the next, a mass of people in blue hats and jackets crowd together to listen to Katie Dunsworth, PR manager, after she jumps up on a small dais. Everyone is clear about the agenda—it’s written on the wall—News, Numbers, What does it all mean? In the news; Missing systems/opportunities and the Cheer.

Dunsworth asks: “Who’s got any news?” and a sea of hands shoot up. A guy at the back tells us that someone called Tracee worked through the night to “book a 30 load job” for the Bank of Chicago. A collective “whoa” goes up. Lance has a two-year anniversary, which earns claps and cheers. There is kudos for Kurt, who finished the previous day with a 67.5% conversion rate and booked 54 leads. A guy standing next to me thanks his colleagues for the extra help they gave to visitors. “It’s made a big impact,” he says.

Turns out the guy is Brian Scudamore, founder and CEO of the company, which has grown to around 180 corporate employees, close to 2,000 system-wide and an average annual growth rate of 57%. There’s some talk of revenues tracking 12% below target, a problem with an open door and then, clearly we’re at the cheer, where all the employees raise their arms, yell and within a minute the room has completely emptied out.

A tour of the office quickly show that it’s not only the meeting agenda that’s written on the wall. Over the reception desk are the words, “It’s all about the people,” signed by Scudamore. It’s now company folk lore that Scudamore, a few years into his fledging business, came in one day fired everyone, and then set about forming a vision for his company. Called “The Painted Picture,” the document outlines what Got Junk will look and feel like in 2009. Under “Our Vision” the goal is “one of growth through leadership—leadership as a brand, as a team, and by our actions and values—passion, integrity, professionalism and empathy.” The goals are to have 250 franchise partners with sales of $100 million by the end of this year and by 2012 to be the “World’s Largest Junk Removal Company with sales of $1 billion and a presence in 10 countries.”

There are framed articles all through the building: articles from the Globe and Mail, Profit, Canadian Business, Business Week, Forbes, even posters of Scudamore on the Dr. Phil show and with Oprah. It’s the first time anyone has tried to brand a trash removal company, and Scudamore has discovered that having five PR people on full-time staff constantly generating media—1,100 articles last year alone—not only creates awareness and sells more franchises, but acts as a retention and recruitment tool for the company.

The Got Junk brand is ubiquitous in the open plan office. Scudamore doesn’t have a desk let alone an office. He just sets up shop wherever he finds an empty space. Painted on walls and on pillars are pithy sayings with things like, “What will that get you?” “Can you bottom line it?’ “What is your desired outcome?” Then there is the “Can-you-imagine-wall?” with the written hopes of individual employees.

Scudamore wants to see Got Junk featured on Letterman or Leno; Jesse Korzan wants to be “recognized as one of the top 10 brands on par with Coke or Nike.” There’s a tick by one that wants a quote on a Starbucks cup—it happened. Dunsworth wants to “make the Junktion a famous tourist destination.” She’s well on the way. After getting ranked the No. 1 company to work for in B.C. for the first time in 2004, she began fielding a bunch of calls from businesses wanting to know their secret. Turns out they are delighted to share. The unadvertised tours have proven so popular that they run one every Friday for up to 20 people who want to see “the Junktion” for themselves, the systems and the culture that have made Got Junk so successful.

On this particular day I’m sharing a tour with a group from Vancouver-based Chalk Media. Eleanor Nickerson, human resources manager, says that, like Got Junk, they have a rapidly growing company with a unique culture and values that they want to keep a grip on. She’s there to find out how Got Junk did it and hopefully recreate some of their magic in her own 60-person shop.

Dunsworth is leading the tour and kicks off by reinforcing the writing on the wall: “There are two fundamentals or core values,” she says. “The people and building a company of leaders.”

Helen Schneiderman, a consultant with Wyatt Watson in Vancouver, the company that partnered with B.C. Business Magazine’s Best Companies to Work for in B.C., says Got Junk really shines around leadership.

“If you meet Brian Scudamore you can get a sense of why that is; their whole approach to leadership and interaction of people who work for the company is quite different from traditional organizations,” she says. “It’s pretty much an open door policy or a no door policy.”

Where other employers are struggling to find staff in the current tight market, Got Junk gets dozens of resumes for job openings. Scudamore says winning best company to work for in B.C. has certainly helped, but just as attractive are the five weeks vacation, the profit sharing which can add 12% to a pay cheque; and flexible hours and working conditions.

It’s all about the cultural fit, he says, in an outfit where few faces have seen 35. “We make sure that we’ve got a great culture that we have an environment where people are happy and thrive. But the No. 1 most important thing is picking the right people because no matter what programs you have in place if you don’t have the right people it just doesn’t matter,” says Scudamore. “We are finding the right people because of the way we treat our current people—they are ambassadors of the brand—they are the ones getting out there saying ‘this is a great company to work for, we have a blast together, we are challenged, we are having fun, we are making money’.”

As Cameron Herold, chief operating officer, will tell you, they are quick to fire and often painfully slow to hire. Every job has a minimum of three interviews, the first of which is a group interview with up to eight candidates vying for the same job. As well as an enormously efficient use of time, Herold says in this Survivor-style of interview, like the proverbial cream, one candidate always rises to the top. Herold doesn’t exactly vote the rest off the island, but only two usually move on to Round 2.

“In a group interview I’m looking for a really strong cultural fit, a really strong energy, people who are vibrating with it and get the whole company and I’m looking for leadership--somebody who can control a group,” says Herold. Questions can range from “Who is the best candidate in the room?” to “what do you have in your closet?”

“It’s really not about the type of questions,” he says. “What it becomes is how people are interacting. I ask some nonsensical questions: What are your favourite books and magazines? If you read Christian Life Science Monitor, you’re not going to be exactly the fit when we bring the beer around on Friday afternoon. I’m just looking for someone who is fun and gregarious and is not going to be a yes man.”

Along the way, potential employees endure a bunch of different performance-based tests and what Herold calls “hoops.” A typical “hoop” might be a potential public relations manager asked to prepare a mock press release or a marketing candidate required to put together a mock marketing plan after analyzing the company website. A third interview will often include Herold or Scudamore and the departmental director.

“We’ll have up to seven people in our company interview the final candidate,” says Herold. “We’ll go through 250 resumes.” The other thing that they do, Herold explains, is plan to promote everyone that they hire. Herold says since he started nearly six years ago, they’ve hired one key operations person every six weeks. “I always look for one or two levels above of what I’m hiring people for,” he says. “And every single person we hire has to raise the average skill level of the group, so if you are bringing a fifth person into PR, they have to be better than the average PR person—it should make everyone a little nervous.”

And it’s not just new employees who are screened. As well as coming up with between $60,000 and $80,000, a potential franchisee must also fit the culture. Dunsworth says that for every 100 applications they receive they accept about three.

Renate Witthoeft is the recruiting manager for the call centre, which now tops 100 and takes calls from all over North America, Europe and Australia. A sign on the door says: “Welcome to the World’s Greatest Call Centre.” New recruits have eight days of training before they are allowed near a phone and then three weeks of real time feedback from trainers who sit next to them and monitor calls. “People,” says Witthoeft, “Get attached to their junk and we help them through that process.” Every new staff member also spends a day on the trucks before they are let loose on the customers. For extra incentive, the top agent gets to drive the office Mini for two weeks as well as the chance to win a trip to Las Vegas or Mexico.

Everyone in the company has a weekly goal setting-and-review meeting and franchisees have formal coaching programs, knowing that the better that they do in their business, the more royalties for corporate. Herold says everyone has mentors outside the company—his personal hero is Starbucks. “We believe that we are not all that smart and there are a lot of really smart companies out there that have already figured all this out,” he says. “So rather than us having a problem solving session there are 30 brilliant companies out there that have paid millions of dollars to consultants to help figure this out let’s just find out who they, are ask them what they did and do that.”

Another thing that’s interesting is Got Junk does not have an HR department. Chalk Media’s Nickerson says she can’t see her company running without the department and even Herold says it’s becoming less a badge of honour as they grow. In fact, he tells Nickerson that they are currently on the hunt for a “chief people officer,” who will keep an eye on the individual departments.

Nickerson says she’ll give the group interview a shot. “I love the idea. The philosophy behind it is personality and in an organization like Chalk we are like a big family. If the personality fit isn’t there it’s not going to work,” she says. “What instantly struck me was the incredible energy of everybody there—you seem to be entering a community and the other thing that struck me is that their physical environment supports their values, missions, aims and goals in a way that ensures that everybody in the company knows where they are going.”

The trick to maintaining the corporate culture, says Herold, is never compromise who you bring onto the island. “Don’t find a person who can do the job and sell yourself on the fact. Find the people who fit in first then make sure they can do the job. If they can’t, keep looking for culture again. Never compromise that,” he says. “Culture only changes because you’ve given it away.”