If you saw our last post, you will know that we recently put out a call for a new Wine, Food, & Beer Tour Marketing position. Well, we have filled that position. And then some.
Before I tell you who we hired, I wanted to provide a few insights into the hiring process.
We only advertised the position in three places: the Boulder, Colorado page (where I live) of Craig’s List; the job board of the Adventure Travel Trade Association; and WineJobs.com. We had the job posting only open for about 10 days and in that time received 156 applications! Most of these came from WineJobs.com.
I feel as if a recruitment effort is similar to talking to potential travelers. These are people who are interested in our company, who spent a lot of time to apply, and who are potential ambassadors for us, whether we hire them or not. So a major goal was to treat them right.
I collected all the applications and personally emailed each person, letting him or her know the process, deadlines, etc. I then started going through the applications (which consisted of both a resume and an online application), carefully reading each one. That was a long process and I eventually had to enlist Reno and Kris in our office to help. But we did read each application and resume individually.
The truth is, it is hard to tell much from a written application. And in reality, we ultimately had to devise a sort of scoring system that automated the process a little. We gave 1-5 points for items such as marketing ability, industry experience, total years of experience, and guiding potential. We ended up creating four “piles” or folders: Best, Possible, No, and Wild Card (those with specific, interesting skills).
Let me switch and say a few things about the resumes and applications. First, I would say only 50% of the people followed our directions and sent us both. Second, quite a few of the resumes were in attachments titled “resume.doc”. If you want to impress, make sure you title your resume “Name resume.doc”, which much more convenient for the reader. It was also interesting how many people just had no relevant experience and yet applied anyway! Finally, I found it fascinating how many people told me why the job was good for them rather than why they would be good for Zephyr
Ultimately, we ended up with 12 Best applications and did phone or Skype interviews with those folks. The 12 applicants were excellent and it was hard to decide. And so we didn’t, entirely. We ended up hiring three different people on part-time contracts.
- Erika Helstrom is currently on a six-month trip through Asia and parts of Africa. She has industry experience working for Incredible Adventures and was very impressive in terms of her interview and references. We thought she was perfect as a long-term Zephyr employee. We will hire her 1/2 time for six months to help with sales and marketing of our tours, with the goal of moving her to full-time in six months.
- Andrea Chomichuk is farther along in her career and has a ton of great marketing experience with a specialty in web marketing. She lives in British Columbia and recently passed her first wine sommelier exam. She will also work 1/2 time and her main goal is to head up our tour marketing by revising our existing marketing plan, implementing it, and training Erika.
- Janet Lea is an alumna of ours who has TONS of experience in Public Relations. She is ready to move to part-time in the PR firm where she works and so was a great fit. Janet will begin work with us in a couple weeks handling our tour PR duties.
Thanks to everyone who applied and welcome to our three new Zephyrites!