I am an Amazon.com and Overstock.com addict. I live the life of the frugal, no pay, startup worker however I do have a weak spot and that is ordering stuff online that gets delivered to my house within 48 hours. Books, clothes, camping stuff – I’ve turned into a fiend that hates to go out shopping and would rather trust the website gods of Jeff Bezos and Patrick Byrne.

Now, I think it is time to add a third member to the online shopping wonder team – this company came out of nowhere when I wasn’t able to procure what I wanted from any including the main company’s site in time for my trip coming up – ZAPPOS.COM

How does this relate to recruiting? Well, I can tell they have a great company culture and are probably some pretty neat people, so obviously they are doing a few things right. Most of all I wanted to say WOW.

What really sealed the relationship between Zappos.com and I was this email I received after placing my order at 7:00 PM MST tonight (I was thinking I wouldn’t get them until Thursday)

Dear Mark Newman,

Hope you’re having a great day!

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been working around the clock and
that we’ve just finished picking and packing your order:

Order #55981624
Crocs Cayman (Men) – Khaki – Men’s 11/D – Medium

Since we are shipping your order with Free Overnight Shipping, your
expected delivery date for this order is:

Wednesday, July 25th 2007

(UPS and Fedex will only pick up from our warehouse on business days, and
they will only deliver on business days.)

We will be emailing you your tracking number later today, when our
computer systems are finished processing all of today’s transactions.

While most companies spend a lot of money on marketing in order to grow
their business, our philosophy at Zappos.com is a little different.
Instead of spending a lot of money on marketing, we would rather work on
improving the customer experience (running our warehouse around the clock,
super-fast free shipping, free return shipping, 24/7 customer support,
etc.), and rely on repeat customers and word of mouth to grow our business
instead.

So if you enjoyed your experience with us, please be sure to tell your
friends and family about Zappos.com!

We are constantly striving to improve our service. If there is anything
that we can do to help improve your experience, please don’t hesitate to
let us know. We like to think of ourselves as a service company that
happens to sell shoes (and now handbags, sunglasses, watches, and
apparel).

Thank you for all of your support — we really appreciate it!

——————————

Jim Durbin amazes me each and every time I talk to him. He really is a true asset to the recruiting world.

http://www.DurbinMedia.com is his site

www.stlrecruiting.com is one of his blogs

Him and his wife are the ultimate branding, design and writing Dream Team.

Many people have helped HireVue out as we have grown and we are so grateful for each and every one of them but I must say that Jim Durbin is one of the best!

On TrustedAdvisor there was a post about how giving help can be one of the best marketing tactics you could use. I agree, Jim has won me over. He is always there to give me help, offer advice, introduce people and he full well knows that HireVue may not ever be this big huge customer but thing is I will sure try to get him 10 other customers from people that I come into contact with.

Thanks Jim – if we ever meet in person I owe you a beefsteak.

Mark