Zappos Will Give You $2,000 To Quit

Posted by in Career Advice


Yes, you read that right. Zappos will give their new employees $2,000 to quit working for them. As a company that focuses more on their corporate culture than their bottom line, they firmly believe that their culture is the same thing as the brand.
 
In order to maintain that culture even as the company grows, they focus on hiring the best people for the job and for their culture. According to Zappos, they start by conducting two completely different sets of interviews for the applicants they are considering.
 
First, the applicant is interviewed by the hiring manager and it goes over the relevant job experience, skills, ability to do the job and fit within the team. This is a fairly standard interview. If the hiring manager and their team like the candidate, their information is then passed along to Human Resources department.
 
The Human Resources department then does a completely separate interview that is more focused on looking for a good culture fit. They look for employees who share their 10 core values:
 
  1. Deliver WOW through service
  2. Embrace and drive change
  3. Create fun and a little weirdness
  4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
  5. Pursue growth and learning
  6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
  7. Build a positive team and family spirit
  8. Do more with less
  9. Be passionate and determined
  10. Be humble
 
In order to be hired, the applicant has to pass both interviews. After they get the job, the next step is the training process. Each new employee goes through the same training that the call center Customer Loyalty reps go through. It doesn't matter what their department is or what their title is going to be, even if you are going to be an executive - they all have to go through the same training.
 
The training last 4 weeks, going over company history, the long term vision of the company etc. For 2 weeks of the training, the new employees are actually on the phone taking calls from customers. Even the people who were hired to be attorneys, developers or accountants. This is because they feel customer service isn't a department.
 
At the end of the first week of training, they offer the new employees $2,000 to quit (in addition to paying them for the hours they have already worked) and the offer stands until the end of the training period. Their goal is to weed out the employee who are just there for a paycheck. They say that they want employees who believe in the company, the company's long term vision and want to be a part of the corporate culture.
 
Believe it or not, less that 1% of new hires actually take them up on the offer.
 
 
 
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for SalesHeadsBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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