A luxury Middle East hotel group counts the number of times a candidate smiles at interview in a bid to boost profits.

This unusual selection criteria is used by Jumeirah Group. It estimates that employing staff that are 10% friendlier than its competitors will boost profits by more than £20m.

And while Jumeirah hires from the same African village as other hotels, which all compete to employ the tallest door staff, it does so on the basis of friendliness rather than height.

During interviews, candidates’ ability to remain friendly is gauged by putting them through simulated exercises with awkward customers, for example.

Professor William Scott-Jackson, a consultant at Oxford Strategic Consulting, shared the Jumeirah Group example in a talk at the Learning, Development & Talent Management Forum in London. He told resourcing professionals and talent management professionals that it was vital for organisations to link their strategic objectives to specific capabilities, such as friendliness.

“You need capabilities that differentiate yourself from your competition and give you a sustainable advantage,” he said.

They must also be valuable - for example, will make a difference to the bottom line and be hard to copy, he added.

In another example, Scott-Jackson said that outsourced services firm Serco, which runs the Dubai Metro, had identified, as a strategic goal, becoming the first choice partner of government by employing local nationals. They linked this to their attraction strategy by recruiting from an area in the North of the Emirates, where it was difficult for people to find work and where they could find sufficient people with the right customer service aptitude.

Scott-Jackson outlined the process that organisations could follow:

• identify the strategic intent
• identify differentiating strategic capabilities
• decide how you can build that capacity
• identify key roles, eg for friendliness, customer-facing roles
• implement though selection process.