It's a common problem at resorts everywhere: the rush for high-season help forces managers to act quickly to fill positions, without thinking as deeply as perhaps they should about how an individual might actually fill a niche.

Mountain High Resort in California is one of many resorts that have struggled when it comes to finding solid season help. "We go from 50 to 75 total employees to as many as 1,200 in peak season, and it happens quickly," says Karl Kapuscinski, president and CEO of Mountain High. "In a good economy, it's very, very challenging. Basically, you hire anyone who is breathing."

That, he admits, can lead to sub-par performance, a lack of customer satisfaction, and an extremely low return rate in employees each year, all things that do not help build a great business.

This year, with the slower economy giving the resort a chance to be more selective about hires, Mountain High is trying it a new way. With a nod to a now more-common practice in summer businesses such as amusement parks, Mountain High will be holding "audition interviews" as part of its hiring process for winter jobs this year. And while the "audition job interviews for the Facebook scene" so vibrantly depicted in the movie, "The Social Network," is a bit of a far-flung example, if you take away the tequila shots, Mountain High's process won't be that much different. After all, it even involves the hokey pokey.


No Bad Actors

As with many great leaders, Kapuscinski got this idea from his wife. Michelle Kapuscinski runs Fiesta Village Family Fun Park, a summer attraction located not far from Mountain High. More importantly, Michelle is on the education and training committee for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), where she picked up the audition idea from other amusement parks, and put it into practice for the 2011 summer season.

The seasonal nature of summer attractions gives them some key similarities with winter resorts. As with winter destinations, the park needs to hire a large amount of folks quickly, in roles that absolutely put them in frontline contact with the public.

How successful has audition hiring been? According to Michelle, the change in culture has been remarkable.

"And it isn't just that we have a good feeling that our employees are a good fit," she says. "We get customer comment cards coming back all the time saying how great the staff are. We got one the other day from a woman who said she goes to these kinds of places all the time, and this was the first time she really felt like the employees wanted to be there-and that they made her feel like the most important person in the world. I'd call that a win."

A year ago, she says, about 35 percent of her summer staff were people she wanted back. This year it's more like 90 percent.

When Karl heard how successful the audition approach was, he knew he could learn from Michelle's new expertise and adapt the idea to Mountain High's needs. And he's grateful for what he's learned from the summer park. "I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure we could do this right now without having experienced it on a smaller scale," he says, since Fiesta Village employs far fewer seasonal employees than Mountain High does.

How Auditions Work

The audition approach succeeds because it reveals a tremendous amount about the applicants. And it reveals a tremendous amount because every aspect of the process is part of the audition, even seemingly routine or mundane details.

First, the resort posts a flyer and sends out e-mails inviting those interested in jobs to come to the audition "at 6 p.m. sharp, dressed to impress; be prepared." How well do the applicants follow those simple instructions? That's the first part of the evaluation process.

To help judge the candidates, the resort places "moles" in the applicant group-either employees or friends of employees-whose job is to observe the interviewees and report on them. That's another part of the evaluation process.

When the interviewees arrive, they are brought into a room where the hokey pokey is playing. Some people start to dance; others hold back. The music stops, and then applicants are told about the audition process, but only a bit. Some candidates are eliminated immediately (not for not doing the hokey pokey; that's just a personality tester), for poor attire choices and other basic preparation failures, such as arriving 15 minutes late.

From then on, applicants are watched closely. For instance, they are given sticker numbers to put on their shirts. But what some might not realize is that their numbers are on the backing, too-allowing employers to see which applicants take the trouble to find a wastebasket, and which just simply ball up the back of the sticker and drop it.

Other steps include pairing the applicants off and having them interview each other, and then giving a presentation introducing the other applicant.

Applicants are also asked to share a clean joke, or one line of a song they like with the group. They are given one minute to think about it, then judged on originality, thoughtfulness and creativity. Any candidate who answers with an "I don't know" is red-flagged.

Next, candidates are put in small groups and instructed to line up by age without talking or texting. This shows how candidates work under pressure, and brings in a little competition by offering a prize to the team that does the best. The last "challenge" is an easy game like "hot potato" to help the group relax again. Then, the hokey pokey is pulled out one more time to see if any candidates change their approach to it.

In addition, the "moles" report on any personal qualities, good or bad, that might have escaped the managers.

The idea in all this is to figure out where people fit and what their strong qualities are, to help managers find a place at the resort that suits the candidate's personality and skills. From what the employers learn from the audition, they also make decisions on whom to bring back for one-on-one interviews.


Tweaks for Winter

Mountain High will tweak this process, based on its experience with other attempts at innovation in the hiring routine and the logistics involved in hiring more than 1,000 seasonal employees.

The resort realized two years ago that it needed to change its process-they had been using a traditional five-day job fair-"a typical cattle call," Karl says. In good economic years, managers didn't have the luxury to be as choosy as they wanted to be, since the jobs were somewhat difficult to fill. But in recent years, with a regional unemployment rate near 15 percent, resort jobs have become more desirable.

"We had thousands lining up for the jobs," says Karl. "But we had no real luck with fitting them into positions, other than could they speak relatively good English and dress decently."

So two years ago, Mountain High experimented with a "speed dating" interview method, with 10 interviewers doing two-minute interviews and rating job-seekers from 1 to 10. Then the managers moved the selected employees to the departments the managers felt were a good match for the applicants.

But that process had problems, too. Speed dating didn't allow enough time to accurately evaluate candidates, and each reviewer's 1 to 10 rating was subjective to them. Plus, as the process wore on, the interviewers grew tired and lost focus.

This year, managers will start with speed dating, but slow the process down. Interviewers will follow a more structured interview process, and the schedule will allow time for the interviewers to breathe and think things over. From those speed dating interviews will come pools of candidates who will then go through the audition process, hokey pokey and all.

And instead of hiring all 1,100 seasonal employees at once, they'll do it in shifts, bringing on the staff they need week by week, and building gradually to full staffing. The process will start toward the end of October and wrap up around mid-to-late December, depending on early-season conditions.

Karl hopes this approach will be as effective for Mountain High as it has been for Fiesta Village-for the sake of both the employees and Mountain High itself. "Someone might have great intellectual skills but not as great people skills, and vice versa," he says. "Some come in having no clue as to what they want to do, or should be doing. This process will help them find the place they fit in best.

"This is going to lead to better service, but it's going to lead to happier employees, too. We are not going to try to make an apple into an orange. And that will help everyone."

The key to the entire process, he says, is not just the auditioning and knowing what the resort needs, but knowing when they need it, too. Timing and a new system, he hopes, will raise Mountain High's customer satisfaction rating as well as the number of return employees.

Of course, it's an investment. "Will it cost us more on the front end? Yes," Karl says. "But if you look at the costs of sub-par employees, from liability to having to win back a customer, this kind of investment is a good thing."

Fiesta Village's experience helped convince him the investment has a good chance for success. "Look, I cannot say we would have been as bold about doing this had we not seen it work on a smaller scale," he says. "But we really feel we are onto something here."