A Conversation About People, Culture & AI in Franchisee Selection

You lead an incredible team. How should folks on your team — recruiting or selection sourcing — be spending their time?

My team does a lot of interviews. One of them is a virtual interview, about two hours long. We ask a lot of information and questions. Unfortunately though, we say no to almost 50% of those candidates. So we're wasting our time and wasting the candidates' time for two hours instead of qualifying candidates.

I'd like our team to spend more time with competitive candidates and really building those relationships and really understanding their candidacy. Alex AI could really eliminate the step of virtual interview for us, free up that time, and help us identify the right candidates.

Tell me a bit about what was happening before Alex.

Our prerecorded interview is a way for us to screen candidates to make sure that they understand our culture, our history, why they want to be in this business, and their leadership skills. We ask four questions, and they get one take. That's not very conversational — it's just a one-way interaction. And sometimes they don't answer the question, so we might be losing out on a great candidate that just needed a follow-up question.

Now, we have a two-way street interaction with Alex AI asking those follow-up questions. We actually get to understand the full candidacy. When I think about candidates' timeline, they want to know an answer quickly. Right now, our candidates might have to wait several months before we can interview them due to capacity, and Alex AI can really help understand the candidate in a quicker manner than we can now. That's not an issue anymore.

We say internally — what's best for the candidate is ultimately what's best for the employee.

Absolutely. First and foremost, our candidates are our customers first. Our guests first. They're putting their lives on hold. These are dreams that they're trying to make come true. So we want them to still be a raving fan of our brand after they go through the interview experience with us.

And Alex AI sounds just like our brand. She's asking great questions. She's insightful, candid — I love that she repeats back what she's saying. It's gathering more information than we ever could get from just an application or a prerecorded interview, and it's such a compact report that we get. So every candidate has a greater experience of sharing their candidacy with us — and we get the benefit of time back in our pocket.

How do you see the intersection between AI and a business like yours, one that is people first, people driven?

It seems like that would be the wrong thing to do — go in the direction of AI when we're such a people business. But I believe AI is a way to gather information. Just like we gather information through an application, a virtual interview, or an in-person, Alex AI helps us gather information on the candidates so we can actually have a more personalized experience for them (and spend time with the right candidates moving forward).

What can other folks learn from what you're doing?

I believe in servant leadership. I'm here to serve my team. I get to steward their careers, and their personal lives, too. I'm invested with them and bringing them along on the journey. It's not "here, do this." It's "why are we doing this?" and "how might we do this?"

Tell me a little about that journey to get to where you are today.

I started in learning development. I did all of our training videos and photo shoots. I really got to share how we make the right products in our business, and I always had a passion for our team selection. To have Alex AI really find those candidates that have the right culture fit and the right competencies has just been incredible. The product is absolutely amazing.

What is most important for fostering an incredible people culture?

Care. Lead with care. If you lead with care, everything else will take care of itself.