Jay Bacrania is the CEO and Co-Founder of Signet Education: a tutoring, test-prep, admissions consulting, and academic coaching company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Signet Education has become an extremely successful company. What makes Signet Education stand out in such a competitive market?
"Money is important to running a business, but for me, the idea is let's build something of absolute, beautiful quality"
Jay has worked tremendously hard with his team to create a company focused on quality service. This means finding the best people you possibly can, treating clients challenges as our own challenges, taking mistakes seriously and learning from them.
Workplace culture is another aspect that is so important to Signet Education. Having a workplace culture that pushes every person to perform their best and grow both professionally and personally is really what sets Jay's company apart.
How do you hire the best people?
When a business is first starting out, it is common for the hiring process to be relatively simple, with few qualifications to get hired. This was true for Signet Education in its early days. As time went on, they have explored many options such as recruiting on college campuses, word of mouth, advertising on job sites, etc.
Now, Signet Education has really narrowed down their employees to people who embody the company's values. Jay recommends a few key points to hiring quality people including providing competitive pay, firmly establishing your workplace culture and values, and finding people who reflect those values.
Sean McCormick 0:01 This is Earn More Tutoring, the ultimate crowdsource education entrepreneurship show. This week I speak with Jay Bacrania, CEO and co founder of Signet Education. Jay and I talk about how he built one of the most successful tutoring companies in the extremely competitive Boston area, how he strengthens his team by giving them ownership and authority over their decision making process and hires the right people. Jay Bacrania 0:26 And it's all gotta be mutual, Sean, it's got to be like, they have to want to work for us, and we've got to want to hire them. And it can't be anything but that anytime it's anything different than that. That's usually there's a crack that's just going to grow and, and cause some kind of problem later on. So a lot of us a lot of what we do is just trying to figure out whether we want them they want us. Sean McCormick 0:48 Welcome back to Earn More Tutoring. My guest today is Jay Bacrania. Welcome, Jay. Jay Bacrania 0:54 Thanks. Sean McCormick 0:55 So to start off, Jay, I just love for you to talk about your your business, what you know what it is your business offers. And yeah, any other ventures that you'd like to share about? Jay Bacrania 1:06 Sure. So I am co owner, co founder in person who runs signant education, tutoring test prep admissions consulting, an academic coaching company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, though, at this point kind of based everywhere. We started in 2005, my friend Andrew started the company join him shortly thereafter. And it's been a long and interesting and kind of fun and terrifying journey through the last 15 years or so. But I guess, to kind of zoom out and sum it all up, I think that one of the things that we are currently wrestling with is even just the description of that the company is a tutoring, test prep, admissions consulting, academic coaching company. Over the years, we do all those services, but we really try to take a holistic view and a long term view with our students and clients and really thinking about, you know, I studied, as we've discussed before I studied comparative religion in college. And you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes for a meaningful life and trying to ask and, and make feeble attempts at an answer of what is the good life? And really thinking about how do we facilitate that kind of thinking for our students and families starting in the high school process, so that as they go through that process, they can really make the most of it and get themselves ready for a meaningful and successful life. So, to me, we do all those things. But really the next frontier for us is how do we do all those things together to help families have the best academic journey that they possibly can? Sean McCormick 3:03 Yeah, that's powerful stuff. I think that I imagine you're, you're searching for the right description and the right pathway for your clients is what draws people to you. I mean, not I'm sure it's not like, published on the page. It's not like we are searching for the perfect, but it's like, because you are a searcher and it's like, I'm still learning. You know, I'm still trying to figure it out, you can provide that sense of inquisition and curiosity. I'm sure it filters down through through your business. And I'm so curious about the comparative religion thing. I'm sure we'll go off onto that at another point. But at the same time, I imagine it plays into your, your level of knowledge, and you're you're wanting to share that with others. Jay Bacrania 3:48 Yeah, to speak to that briefly. Because I think it's important in our field. When you read a tutoring and test prep, admissions consulting, academic coaching company like we do, you, you face a lot of a lot of people come in, and they they have a lot of different agendas. And over the years, what we realized is that certain hatheway seem to lead to happier, more well adjusted, and frankly, more successful and a lot of different definitions of the term. Students in certain pathways seem to lead to more pain for the student in the family. And the the, the commonality in the more successful pathways is really having a kind of deliberate approach to things and a well considered approach and approach that connects to who the student actually is in terms of their interests and proclivities and strengths and weaknesses and their, you know, neuro psych type profile and all those things have to be taken really seriously and into consideration to help the student really To find how to thrive. And so, when we think about like that comparative religion background, and that seeking background, it really is, I think that you can do a tremendous amount of good in our type of company. And you can also facilitate a lot of pain, right helping somebody just get two or 300 points on a test, you know, that might do good in a lot of cases. But sometimes that could be the exact wrong prescription for for somebody...
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