If there was ever a company who’s name truly reflects what it is and what it’s all about, then maybe – just maybe – it’s this company: celebrations company, Sincere.
While its founder, Matt Douglas, openly talks about creating a ‘family’, and wanting to give his staff the ‘best job people they will ever have’ (which, frankly, I’ve heard lots of mediocre companies proselytize), this company might just be the one that is the exception to the rule – by actually delivering on it.
With a heart, and a passion, and a caring philosophy for its people Sincere really is the company that is Sincere by name and sincere by nature.
So how do we know this?
Recently we sat down with its COO, Stephanie Fader, initially to talk about something that pricked our ears.
Sincere – so its PR department told us – had unwittingly discovered a strange predictor of success, and would we like to speak to them.
It claims that its most successful hires are people for whom working for them would be their second ever job.
Well, that alone made us want to speak to Sincere, to find out more.
But very quickly, we learned a lot more about what makes this company’s approach to its people so unique…
Q: So, we’ve got to start off with something I’ve never heard of before – you guys hiring second-jobbers. What’s the story here?
A: “The first thing we need to say is that we don’t ‘only’ hire second-jobbers, and it’s not a specific hiring criteria we set in stone. However, what we have found through experience is that over time [I’ve been here 16 years] when people join us and its their first job, there’s often a lot of extra hand-holding, and getting people used to transitioning out of college and into the world of work. By contrast, when people join us and it’s their second job, they’ve made that transition already. They know the ropes, so-to-speak, but most crucially, they’re still young enough to be molded into the type of employee we want them to be. We’ve somehow just found that the hiring sweet spot comes from recruiting people who have worked at just one place before us.”
Q: Can you directly correlate hiring second jobbers and these people being hugely successful in your organization?
A: “Oh yes, totally. I was thinking of a number of second jobbers we’ve hired prior to this interview. Our director of mobile engineering started out his career as an android developer elsewhere. When he applied to us, we can could see he had potential. He joined in 2019, and now manages a whole team in Poland and Latin America. While don’t just hire second jobbers – for some roles we actively want someone who is entry level – we do find that they make brilliant employees. While some roles will be entry-level, with other roles, we definitely do look for a just one year, or two years’ experience.”
Q: Do you concur with what many workplace commenters bemoan – that young people directly out of school aren’t ‘work-ready’ and employers resent having to ‘mother’ them?
A: “Yes, I do think this is true to a large extent. A lot of people just aren’t made ready for work at school/college. I think this has been particularly true post-Covid, because even internships at many companies were remote.”
Q: How can you promise giving people the best job they’ll ever have, if lots of your hires have only had one job previously, and won’t have seen what other employers offer?
A: “It’s a good question! While all of our first or second-job hires will obviously not have a firm grasp of what else is out there, what we do say is that we want to give people the job they ‘expect’ – and that’s the key thing here. Do this, and we know people won’t even want to consider leaving, to test the waters elsewhere. We have plenty of staff who have been with us ten or more years. That sort of longevity is not unusual.”
Q: I understand this ‘best job’ concept starts even at someone’s first interview – with your now-famous ’24 Hour Challenge’. Can you tell our readers more about this?
A: “Our goal is to learn about the person as much as possible before we offer a position. We want to know how people think and what makes them tick. This is where the “24-Hour Challenge” comes in. After we interview someone, we ask candidates to send us an email within the next 24 hours asking for two things – a covering letter asking why they think they’re the best fit for us, but more crucially, we also ask them to send us something that shows us who they are and how they think. The deadline part is just to make sure people really can meet a real deadline (as per the work environment), but also to really hear something very personal about them.”
One candidate’s ’24-Hour Challenge submission photo
Q: It’s not a competition to find who does the most interesting things, but more how they describe something, yes?
A: “Absolutely. A lot of second jobbers won’t have massive life experience, so we’re not asking them to show us something impressive for the sake of it. We’re more looking for creativity around an everyday experience. We’ve had people send us videos about them Irish dancing – complete with their story of how the desire to dance fulfilled a childhood dream. We’ve also had others that are more journal-like. One candidate (with photos) told us how they tracked down a rare book about their hometown, discovered it had not be digitized, and set out to do this themselves. Someone else showed us doing ice sculptures. But equally, we’ve had someone simply tell their story, but in the form of a child’s story book.”
Q: Why does something like this matter to you so much? Don’t candidates just think you’re getting them to jump through unnecessary hoops?
A: “When we talk here about our culture, we talk about it being irreverent, and not wanting to take ourselves too seriously, but also doing work, but having fun doing it. The 24-Hour Challenge can really can make a difference about someone if we have reservations, or are just not quite sure about them. On plenty of occasions the challenge really has got people over the finish line. It just gave us more insights into these people. I actually think candidates enjoy doing it; they understand the hiring process is two-way; and they understand that we value wanting to find out more about people. I think that’s something they welcome, because they know it means they’re being taken seriously. We genuinely find people reveal really interesting stuff. One employee wrote about how everyone always gets his name wrong because he’s Egyptian. That one was years ago, but it was so memorable I still think about it now.”
Q: Is Sincere a model for other organizations?
A: “We do what we do because of who were are, and it works for is. We have a foundation – which has given out more than $375,000 – and we must be doing something right because we now have existing staff referring their friends to work for us. But we maintain that the key to our success is the way we do our hiring. We like hiring good, curious people; maybe they’re a bit scrappy to start with, but if they’re smart they can move around within this business and have great personal success.”