Wonolo
I am a product of the 1990s. For better or worse, the music and the fashion and the world’s events of the 90s shaped my generation. It probably wasn’t our proudest decade, but if the 90s taught us anything, it was that we all love a good sports underdog story. The Mighty Ducks, Cool Runnings, Little Giants, even true stories like Hoop Dreams and Rudy. Stories about individuals or teams that truly punch above their weight class and give us hope.
Take Rudy for example – the story of the a young man who had two very specific dreams that since he was a little boy, he was told again and again were out of reach. He wanted to go to Notre Dame and he wanted to play football. Unluckily for Rudy, he grew up in a working class family that didn’t send their children to college, and he was closer to a jockey’s height than a football player’s. He lacked the financial ability to pay for school and the athletic ability to play football.
But Rudy had one thing, the thing that we made us open our hearts to him and his story. He had a winning attitude. He put his mind to achieving those goals, despite all the obstacles he faced, and he did it. He was accepted into Notre Dame and he played as a walk-on for the Fighting Irish.
What Rudy lacked in ability, he made up for with attitude. And as cheesy as it may seem, that is a lesson we have taken to heart here at Wonolo. What we value is that you want to succeed, not that you have been successful or were seemingly built for success. We value your attitude. We believe in the equally cheesy quote by a guy with an equally cheesy name, Zig Ziglar, that “your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” It is our job at Wonolo to provide the opportunity to those with the attitude to capitalize on it.
It’s easy to say you value attitude over aptitude, but identifying aptitude is easy while attitude is not. Think about today’s typical job interview – the resume, the qualifications, the ‘tell me a time when’ scenarios – they all help you determine aptitude. Aptitude is often right in front of your face and easy to quantify. It’s like an iceberg. The top part is aptitude – in plain site and well understood. The bottom part is attitude – unseen and undiscovered until you really dive in. Most people don’t have a process to dive in, so they stop at the top of the iceberg. That’s not what we do.
The most important part of our process is getting crystal clear on what attitudes we value. Gary Veynerchuk has three traits he values: patience, integrity, and empathy. He hires someone immediately if he discovers they have them. At Wonolo, we look for 5 traits in potential Wonoloers. We believe that any Wonoloer that embodies these traits and exhibits them while working a Wonolo job will get 5 stars. Which in turn means they are more important than prior experience or education in predicting success. We call these traits the 5Ps.
The 5Ps are: Professional, Prepared, Positive, Polite, Punctual. They are all self explanatory and if we are honest with ourselves, fairly common sense. But as Voltaire taught us, “common sense is not so common.” After we We introduce to theshare with Wonoloers what the 5Ps are and what each of them means,. Then Wonoloers they go through our proprietary onboarding process to determine if they understand and possess the 5Ps. If so, we welcome them onto our platform. welcome to Wonolo!
After onboarding, Wonolo works as a meritocracy. Perform well, get more access to jobs. Perform poorly, lose access. But the commonality between all Wonoloers is that they have the right attitude to be successful. Hundreds of thousands of people have begun our onboarding process, but not all have passed. If you have the right resume but the wrong attitude, I am sure there is some traditional staffing agency that would be happy to take you. We have 30,000 Wonoloers who have shown us that they believe in the 5Ps as well. The average Wonoloer rating of 4.85 out of 5 star shows that it works.
Think of it this way – you could have the underdog’s underdog, Dan “Rudy” Ruettiger or Mr. Johnny Football himself, Johnny Manziel on your team. One lacking in talent but overflowing with a winning attitude, the other, born with a football in his hand but the quintessential loser’s mentality. While the Cleveland Browns clearly don’t subscribe to our philosophy on talent, much of the rest of the NFL showed that they did on May 8th 2014, as the Heisman Trophy winner slid down further and further during the draft until picked up by the Browns at the 22nd pick. And despite all that talent, two years later, he is now out of the league.
But don’t take our word for it. Mark Murphy tracked 20,000 new hires in the US and found:
- Within the first 18 months of hire, 46% had failed.
- Of those failed hires, 89% failed because of attitudinal reasons.
- Only 11% failed due to lack of skill.
Spotting skill is easy. But diving deep and knowing what it is you are looking for, that is what sets winning organizations apart. Find the right attitude for your company, your team, and your culture – then hire for it. Perhaps one day they’ll make a movie about your team too.
