This is 3Bits & Change, an email about building a service and retail business. This one was written to the sounds of Starbucks. You know ‘em. The buzzer on the hot sandwich machine going while the door swings open, people yell first names at random and a group of interns from France ramble loudly about a card game they’re playing. Coffee shops are where it’s at!
Good day,
It’s been a month and 4 days since the last post on this tread. Whew. It’s been weeks since the social feeds for Vivront have had a regular posting cadence. It’s been something.
I’ve been at the shop 6 days a week for 6 weeks now. It’s been a blast. It’s been a slog. It’s been a chance to start new habits. They say 21 days will make a new habit. I’m 42 days into this schedule. I’m thankful for the chance to build this business and to move it to 50th. Now, it’s past time to switch it up.
WASCO - Walking Around Checking Stuff Out
I have this notion that the shop will be better off with some chunks of intentional leather in key areas. It’s just a little “clang-ish” when setting knives down on hard surfaces.
We’ll have custom leather pieces cut for the front edge of the cabinets (if the tops ever come - now standing at 6 weeks behind schedule) and near the knife fitting areas. Maybe we’ll even have a killer leather top for the check in/out station. It’ll make passing knives around more lush. I’m excited about that.
Tim suggested that I chat with Rob who, has a side hobby a bit like my kitchen knife hobby - pre-store - and he stopped in to talk leather. We chatted. Ideas flowed freely and maybe we’ll even make some knife rolls and such together. We’ll see.
A few days passed and Rob, who writes WASCO, posted a lovely spot on the shop. Thanks Rob! It was not expected and yet so so nice to open and scroll. So nice!
Folks, go check out Rob’s full post here. Consider subscribing… Rob shares what his eye sees on a weekly basis in sketch and prose and it’s delightful.
$2800+ and one lack luster reply
Hey Zip… are you out of your mind?
I had posted jobs to Ziprecruiter (Zip), Handshake, Indeed, Culinary Agents (CA) and a few others in middle October after having settled into a bit of a routine at the shop enough that I could contemplate hiring someone and training on our updated systems. I had a strong desire to “find someone,” turned on the faucet and kept on with the business of the shop.
Resumes flowed in and I assessed them. Each tool has pluses and minuses. As for the candidates, we saw low volume on Handshake, entry level skill sets on Indeed, more management experience on Zip and more industry experience on CA.
When posting all of them at the same time it can be real challenging to remember who came from what platform, how to “tune” the post for the platform and how to keep track of the fees you clicked during setup. In hindsight, from my experience, there are - no doubt - skilled revenue optimization teams at these job posting orgs working primarily on the behalf of their employers and not you and I… the customers who really would like to have quality staff join us, soon.
I was running a shop and doing everything - showing up on time, ordering, sharpening, checking things in, doing service, shipping, etc. before trying to hustle through email and sleep enough to be sane the next day to do it again and again. Apparently, in all of that, I paid Zip +17.5 an hour for 40 hours of “work” per week in a short month of time.
The results of that first batch of “work” by Zip:
A persistent and annoying applicant evaluation process that also did not seem to work - the applicant pool did not become more qualified over time
18 candidates I wanted to interview by phone
Upon reaching out to each candidate via the message tool in Zip with zero replies I then contacted each by email AND text and received… one reply. One
That reply by text indicated that the candidate would not entertain leaving their current job for less than $20 and hour. That’s OK and inbounds on the job post. I replied asking when we could chat via phone to see if their skillset matched the role and received… NO reply
I dropped the posting on Zip after learning that, based on performance, ZipRecruiter is the worst employee I’ve ever hired and the system either does not allow access to viewing former applicants for a closed job OR does not make it easy to find
I searched other job boards for the remnants of the posts I had made to Zip and they spewed haphazardly around the internet so I could recall the post I had made weeks prior to make an update and post to new boards
There have been vast changes in the working landscape in recent years. I get it. However, I expected job boards with teams of talented people dedicated and compensated to build high functioning tools to perform better than these did. Heck I’ve paid recruiters less to find candidates for other jobs. I get the sense that hiring is not the main focus of these boards… but sucking up revenue certainly is.
A few tips for making these tools work slightly better:
Include something like the following (specific to what you’re looking for) at the very start of your job posts to help candidates “self select, not:” “NOTE, Don't apply... unless 1) You approach work with hospitality at its foundation, 2) you'll reply to messages and get on a call with our manager in under 24 hours 3) you can start in 7-12 days.”
NEVER intentionally or unintentionally boost a post without an expiration date. It’s a terrible and under described “feature.”
So where are we now?
We’ve hired a few folks and are in the process of interviewing and hiring two others. Two of these wonderful folks came from walking in the store. Really. One of them is a family friend and one came from this newsletter. Really.
I recently listened to Sam Corcos on Ferriss’ pod in late September and one of the topics they touched on briefly was that of network theory. I was intrigued by the power of loose networks where the so called fringes of the networks is where often overlooked value resides. Wind forward three months and it’s true for this hiring experience.
Job boards are a tax on those with under cultivated networks? I’m going to be taking some actions in the coming year to focus on intentionally cultivating my network. Stay tuned.
TBD - Cabinets
“With all the deer hunting PTO this time of year I can’t commit to an install date.”
Sum
I was delighted to share some time with Rob in the shop and even more delighted to open my email and see his wonderful sketches of the shop. Thanks Rob.
I’m going to work network more than job boards going forward. And, don’t be surprised when cabinets get installed LATE.
Change
I got a notification recently that an object I designed and posted to Thingiverse years ago got remixed. I smiled and was reminded of the minimal desk set design effort that tape dispenser was a part of. Now, Ugmonk Gather items are on my desk and along the same line of design principles.
The Vivront team has grown! Wahoo!
On Your Way
Enjoy Saturday. Last Saturday was a wild ride at the shop, the biggest day of the company’s history. We’ll see what today is like!
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Order kitchen knives sharpened or give the gift of sharp at Vivront.com.