Bringing In The Team

Our most recent project was hiring the perfect team.  I have worked in many different places, and have learned that servers who can work together as a team will make their work experience that much more fun!  Our goal at The Morning Jump is to have a family feel, not only for our baristas, but also for our regulars and all guests. We were looking for individuals who are bubbly, outgoing, hardworking, and attractive.  Our first location is right outside the Spring Lake gate.  Because of this, we mostly cater to the military.  The experience of getting your coffee is as important as the coffee we serve.

When trying to find people we wanted to work at The Morning Jump, we scouted out baristas who were already in the food service industry.  After searching for a while, we weren’t overly successful, and debated about posting an article on craigslist, not knowing if we would find the type of girls we wanted.  But we ended up with over 100 applications in 1 month!  We were ecstatic about the responses.  We had found some beautiful fun girls; the hard part was choosing which ones we would keep.  Our coffee shop is going to start out small.  We will only have enough room for 3 people in the shop at one time, possibly 4.  Therefore, we only were able to hire 4-6 girls, out of 100!  We narrowed our applications down to about 20 girls, and were excited to get interviewing!

For the interview process we brought in our good friend Heidi Kingston who is a psychologist to help us pick the perfect team. The interviews were an adventure!  We had the owner, Erik Brinkman, his fiancé and headhunter, Danae Leavitt, Heidi Kingston, the psychologist, and me the marketing and communications girly.  Our interview process was different than any other interview these girls have experienced for a part-time job.  A full board of people interviewed these girls!  They all handled the pressure exceptionally well, because all the ladies we chose were very outgoing and fun; so this was quite the enjoyable experience.  The interviews went all day long!   We started at 8 in the morning and finished at 6:30 at night.  I had flown in from Korea the day before, and was fighting the jet lag my hardest! Coffee was most definitely my best friend, even more than it is on a normal day.  When 3 o’clock rolled around I was struggling with a wall of sleep that almost seemed impossible to work through.  I began falling asleep on one of the girls we were interviewing, and had to apologize and assure her I really did like her!!  She wasn’t boring me; it was my body telling me it was way past bedtime!  She was actually one of my favorite applicants.

Some of the girls we have decided to bring onto the team are experienced in coffee, and from the west coast.  They have worked in shops and know the style of coffee we like.  Other girls have never worked in a coffee shop, and hardly knew the difference between espresso and black coffee.  Everyone we have asked to join our team brings a different, fun, family feel.  We were more than successful!  We are confident that when you come to The Morning Jump for your specialty coffee you will get special treatment by our incredible staff as well!