Here’s the thing with self-storage facilities: You sort of tend to do it alone. It’s self-storage, right? Find a unit that’s big enough, load your stuff, and have the peace of mind that it’s not gonna go anywhere. It’s pretty simple when you think about it.
Of course, when you’re actually doing it, things are a bit more complex. The hinge point lies on that “self” descriptor — I’ve used self-storage facilities before, but I’ve never not thought that I could use an extra pair of hands. That’s where Extra Space Storage gets their customers. When other companies started reducing their onsite staff, Extra Space added more. We recently got a chance to talk to their Senior Director of HR, Tyler Jacobsen, about the importance of their people, and how they’re leveraging next-gen software to hire them.
Erik Schmidt: Many self storage companies are eliminating on-site staff, but Extra Space is not. How does this set yourself apart from competitors?
Tyler Jacobsen: We believe our people are what differentiates us from our competitors and makes us a better product, and that's the reason why we outperform our competitors. From a revenue perspective, our occupancy rates are higher and just our overall company performance is better — and we feel that's due to that human aspect.
Our properties have a store manager that is responsible for running that property on a day-to-day basis. They ensure the cleanliness of the property and they take care of customers as they come in. And then we also have assistant managers who can assist in some of those same duties as needed. They rotate from store to store and help out wherever the needs are. Now, we've tested kiosks before, and we do feel like having someone there that can be a resource for our customers is the best option. We've also done a lot with our customer experience team to better understand what the customer wants, and from that listening and research we know that it’s better for our customers to have someone on site.
We believe our people are what differentiates us from our competitors and makes us a better product, and that's the reason why we outperform our competitors.
ES: What is the tangible impact that those store managers are driving for you?
TJ: The store manager can have a significant impact on the performance of our properties. What we try to do is put our top performers at the properties that need more help. There are enough properties within a single market that we can pretty easily move employees from one location to the other, and it’s common that we will switch a store manager from one property to the other if we need to bring the rentals up at that property. So we absolutely do feel like that the right store manager can drive the performance of the property.
ES: Since this seems like such a critical position, what sorts of traits or skills do you look for in the store manager role?
TJ: For each of our store managers we have five traits that we've identified that makes them successful. Those are: drive, kindness, empathy, positivity, and curiosity. So those are the five things that we feel like really differentiate the top performers from those that are not, and those are the traits that we want in every one of our employees. We use the Traitify assessment to help us identify those traits early in the process, and we’ve also built interview guides with behavioral-based questions for our hiring managers that have questions geared around identifying those five traits.
We hire the majority of our employees into the assistant manager position, and then they’re able to move up into other positions from there. Using the assessment, it does help us directly identify the best talent. So leveraging that assessment to make a good hire is a critical first step, but then also continuing to give that employee opportunities as they progress within their career to store manager or up to corporate roles. We do value internal mobility and promoting from within, so getting the right people in the door in that entry level position is vital to the overall success of the company.
ES: What other tactics have you deployed to ensure you’re able to get to the talent you need, especially since you’re competing broadly with retail organizations?
TJ: Before Paradox, we were missing out on top talent because our process was too slow. We weren't getting candidates through the interview process quick enough. By the time we got back to them, they had already moved on or had other offers. We realized that by leveraging technology, in particular conversational AI, we could move on candidates a lot quicker. We now have an AI assistant named Olivia who can engage with them and move them through the steps of the process automatically, from application to assessment to scheduling. It's a much better candidate experience because they're actually hearing from us and getting communication from us almost instantly. Through this automated process, we’ve been able to reduce our time-to-hire by 45%. So our ability to bring in better talent has definitely been improved through leveraging technology.
We hire more from retail than we do the self-storage industry. So retail is really where most of our employees come from, and the other way we differentiate ourselves is the hours that we can offer. In retail you're working nights, weekends, you have flex schedules — it can be challenging. At Extra Space, we have a set schedule, and we're off major holidays and no Sundays. That is a really big draw from people that are working a retail schedule. They can come in and have a set schedule and know that it will be the same every week. That’s for sure something that helps us attract talent from within the retail space.
ES: You guys have transformed basically everything about your hiring process in recent years, from your career site to adding in an assessment to layering in AI automation. What did that process look like internally and how did you make sure you got it right?
TJ: We started by understanding our process and understanding where the gaps were. One of the things we did is we actually created a fake candidate and we applied for 80 open positions within the company, and we just measured what happened with that candidate. We stepped back from a TA perspective and just watched how that progressed through our different hiring managers. In doing that, we identified where our gaps were. And as soon as we understood that, then we knew that we wanted to look at technology to solve those challenges. I really do think that’s the essential part — taking the time to actually look at our processes and understand where our gaps were and where we could improve, so that when we did look at technology, we knew exactly what we were looking for.
So many times I get calls from vendors who say, “We've got this process. We think it'd be perfect for you.” And it really should be the other way around where you identify the need first and then go out there and find the tools that can help you.
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You can hear more about Extra Space’s story below:
