Scaling With Purpose Kit: Purpose-Driven Hiring

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Zekesh** (0:17)
Welcome back to The Bliss Business Podcast series, Scaling with Purpose. These are our quick listen shows where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your organization. I'm Stephen Zekesh here with Tulio, Syragusa, and Ashmar. Hey, guys. Hello.

**Tulio Syragusa** (0:35)
It's good to be back.

**Stephen Zekesh** (0:37)
So today, we're focusing on purpose-driven hiring. Hiring aligned individuals is about more than just filling roles. It's about finding people who deeply connect with your company's mission and values, ensuring they drive and grow alongside your purpose. So hiring the right people. These are those who genuinely resonate with an organization's purpose. This can transform a team. They bring energy and passion, which creates a ripple effect on culture and performance.
Tulio.

**Tulio Syragusa** (1:13)
You know, that's such an important thing, hiring for alignment. And often, people will say, hire people that are similar or that fit in. But it's really more about alignment. And it's about a good concept that not only creates a good feeling with everyone because you have a sense of alignment, but it's also a strategic advantage because employees that are aligned with the purpose also bring more motivation, more energy.
They're more collaborative and they have a longer-term commitment to the organization because it fits, it resonates with who they are, and that's the key thing.

**Stephen Zekesh** (1:57)
Yeah, Ash, as Tilo mentioned, it's not just about this sort of feel good thing. It can really matter to the bottom line in terms of retention and effort, right?

**Ashmar** (2:07)
Oh, absolutely. There's a trend in people hiring or companies hiring for alignment. There's actually a LinkedIn study. Let me read it to you guys. It says, 87% of millennials value purpose over paycheck, making alignment a critical for tracking top talent. When employees connect with your purpose, they're not just doing a job, they're contributing to a mission that sends a meaning boost, engagement, and retention. And that was a study done by LinkedIn. Now, I know Tilo Patagonia is really good at this. Can you make some examples?

**Tulio Syragusa** (2:41)
Yeah, actually, that's a great example. I mean, when you look at Patagonia, you know, what's their purpose? The purpose is saving our home planet. It's not saving the planet. It's saving our home planet. I mean, it's very purposeful. The words are being used. It's bringing about making it our home, right? So, and they hire people who really are passionate about the environment and environmental conservation. And this alignment ensures that all the employees live this company value, you know, creating cohesion and also a very motivated workforce. Imagine you hire someone who didn't care. It just, it would be very difficult for them to align with the culture. They'd be going like swimming against the stream to a certain degree, right?
So alignment hiring is really about reducing cultural friction. And the reality is that's really the job of a CEO to remove the friction points. So if you have the culture where you're focusing on a purpose and you gain alignment around that purpose and you hire people where it's a like attracts a like kind of thing, you have more purpose driven employees that are more likely to support the values of the company and collaborate and also create more innovation because they believe in what they're doing. It's something that's not just a job for them, it's who they are, it's their life. And Patagoria really exemplifies this. They have continuously long term been able to live up to the standard of this purpose and attract the right kind of people. They're very unique culture as a business.

**Stephen Zekesh** (4:20)
You know, I think about like when I walk into an REI or something, you're going to buy some hiking boots or something like that. You know, you get, you genuinely sense this higher purpose among all the employees that, you know, they really are passionate about what they're doing. And so it's like, how do you get there with your own employees when you're hiring? So one of the things you really got to do is, you know, clearly define your purpose. If it's not clearly communicated, you're going to attract the wrong candidate. And a lot of times it's communicated in very vague ways. And that's usually where the problem is. But in job postings, don't just list, you know, responsibilities, highlight your mission and your values. So instead of saying, yeah, we're hiring a software developer, frame it as, join us to build technology that empowers communities to access clean water. Something, you know, you get, you could have two different jobs.