Recruit Standout People to Build a Standout Brand - Veerle Donders, Zoku

Josiah: 0:00

Zoku is a hospitality brand based in the Netherlands that has one of the most differentiated and compelling cultures I've come across recently. In this episode, you'll learn from their director of concept V, brand, , about how they think about recruiting people into their organization. I'd be curious to hear you talk a little bit about how you think about recruiting and attracting the right people. How do you make them aware that Zoku could be a place for them and a career opportunity for them?

Veerle: 0:49

I think it's always been interesting thing and I have to say we're still learning on that. But one of the biggest things for us is that we are a brand with a big personality and I think people get either attracted to that or not attracted to it. So when you're going to apply it, zoku, it's going to be a different type of concept than any traditional hotel, so you need to like that. So we do get a lot of like younger talent in that likes to try new things or wants to be part of this exciting, growing brand. Another thing that people really get attracted to it, Zoku, is the fact that we are B Corp, so it's for us. We're not only in it to make profit but we also want to make the world a better place and especially with, I think, the younger generation, this really resonates. So their reasons for at least applying and talking to us about career opportunities really is because they believe in our purpose and they believe in community building. And then they, you know, they like the concept, they like the purpose. And then when it comes to selecting, it's really through the conversations that we have we kind of look for a certain mix of personalities, because you can't only have extroverts and only have introverts, and you know they're all. You know it needs to be the right balance. So we always look at that. But the one most important thing that we look for it's not if you can make a good cappuccino, because we can teach you that, but it's if you just love taking care of people. So everybody that works at Zoku is just crazy about people. I can talk about it for hours, but I just love making people happy. It's those kind of people that like to work for Zoku. So they just, you know, they say I'll just run a mile for someone because I just love it when they're happy. And I can go completely crazy when it's someone's birthday. I just love the balloons and the cards. And we love those people because we never have to tell them anything about trying to make someone else happy, because that's just in their DNA. And then we can teach them about cappuccinos and we can teach them about how to do service. That's something that can come through time, but this is like the main thing that we look for and we have a couple of characteristics that we look for, but this is the most important one.