Spare him the gurus

Workforce, June, 2003 by Andy Meisler, Todd Raphael

This year Paychex estimates that it will receive more than 25,000 applications for about 2,000 open positions, most of them for payroll specialists or sales representatives. "Tom looks for people who want to be successful and are looking at Paychex as their vehicle for personal success," says Walter Turek, the company's vice president for sales and a 22-year veteran of the firm. It means that the person doesn't have a track record of being successful in business or at another company, he explains. It also means that this hasn't discouraged him.

Turek adds that most successful candidates have experienced "moments of success"--high-school sports stardom, for instance, or being the first in their family to attend college. These "moments" no doubt serve them well during an arduous selection and training process, which starts several months before they even begin their training in Rochester.

"What we don't want," says Will Kuchta, the company's vice president for organizational development, "is to find out on a new hire's first day of work--after we've spent $13,000 on his or her training--that he or she isn't right for the job." Kuchta, who worked on an assembly line and as a lathe operator before returning to college to get his Ph.D. in education, supervised the design of Paychex's current hiring and training systems and works in the top tier of management beneath the CEO.

The organization rarely advertises for entry-level employees, Kuchta says. In the case of payroll specialists, it recruits via "ambassadorship" relationships between its branch managers and accounting professors at local colleges. "To tell you the truth, we have better luck at JCs than at four-year colleges," he says. "Most of the people in junior college are working their way through school. They know how to get up and go to work each day. Most people with baccalaureate degrees, they've only worked as lifeguards."

Applicants take a test to measure their basic math and logic skills. Kuchta says the exam was designed at about an eighth-grade level. They also undergo four increasingly lengthy interviews with employees and managers at the branch. During the interview process, most of the square pegs "deselect" themselves, he says. New hires are assigned a mentor and spend a month at the branch observing, learning, and dipping their toes into actual work. Only then are they flown to Rochester for formal classroom instruction.

"We have about a 99 percent success rate among the people who make it to the two-week course," Kuchta says. Paychex instructors are available for remedial tutoring practically anytime after school, including weekends. After returning to their respective branches, new hires start work and complete an average of about a year's worth of home-study learning "modules." Their education doesn't stop there. Paychex employees spend an average of 109 hours a year in training classes--which is almost twice the average in Training magazine's Top 100 (this year Paychex ranked number 33). In this no-frills, no-nonsense regimen, little or no time is spent on team-building exercises such as rope climbing or corporate singing. And for most employees, training never stops. Every Friday afternoon at every branch, time is devoted to instruction in new products and techniques. Managers on the promotion track return to Rochester every two years for further intensive training.