Find and hire amazing people

What can retailers do to find and hire amazing people?

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Retail Contrarian, the blog of the Dynamic Experiences Group

With unemployment on the decline and many companies in need of workers, competition for top candidates is definitely on the rise.

Here are some tips for filling open positions with amazing people:

  1. Cast a wider net. Stop requiring people to have retail or sales experience. It’s worth wading through a bunch of “no”s to find an unexpected amazing “yes”.
  1. Compensate your staff for recruiting. Your best recruiters already work for you. I’d rather pay my staff a referral bonus than advertise, but both are often necessary.
  1. Advertise where job seekers are looking. I continue to meet people who are still using classified ads with no luck. I’ve had the most success with Craigslist, marginal success with Zip Recruiter and LinkedIn, and the least amount of success with Monster (unless for a high-level position).
  1. It’s all in the headline. The least effective headlines for ads (and what most retailers do) consist only of the job title. The most effective headlines focus on the quality of the work environment. Sample headlines I’ve successfully tested:

Work Where You’re Appreciated and Make a Difference

Work With Fabulous People and Products

We’re the Company You’ve Been Looking For

  1. Post on your own social media. Just make sure you position it as hiring additional or seasonal help. You never want to inadvertently give the impression that your store is understaffed. Again, it’s all in the headline. 
  1. Start with a phone interview. Phone interviews are a quick and easy way to screen applicants. I usually know within 10 minutes if it is someone I want to get to know better. 
  1. Have them work the floor as part of the interview. Anybody can say they’re a “people person.” I always ask managerial applicants to work the floor for a few minutes. My most amazing hires were people who were just okay in the interview and then came alive when working with customers. I also want to see how they handle pressure.

 

BrainTrust

"When a retailer has a reputation of treating its employees well, word gets around and efforts to recruit new employees are more successful."

Max Goldberg

President, Max Goldberg & Associates


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Adrian Weidmann

Managing Director, StoreStream Metrics, LLC


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Adrian Weidmann

Managing Director, StoreStream Metrics, LLC


Discussion Questions

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Which of the recommendations in the article do you find most beneficial? What tip(s) would you add on how to find and hire quality store staff?

Poll

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Bob Phibbs
Trusted Member
7 years ago

Doug had some great tips here. I would disagree with the last, “Have them work the floor as part of the interview.” You can find someone who really likes to talk to people, but that’s not what the job is. I would say hire someone, train them to your standards and give them 30 days to prove it. Especially with all the tips on the web these days of how to hack a job interview I think it would be easier to make a great impression being thrown in the pool to make a splash without having any real substance to go the distance.

Kim Garretson
Kim Garretson
7 years ago

I would add an eighth tip: Capture a dataset of qualified, interested applicants who don’t find the right job for themselves today. Allow them to sign up for job alerts on criteria they set, and then send them email updates on your business and a triggered email alert when a job they are interested in opens. Perhaps even send the new job alert first just to the dataset with the message that they are getting this alert before the job is posted. Many top retailers are beginning to add this job alerting function to their jobs sites.

Ralph Jacobson
Member
7 years ago

Train your interviewers — including yourself — if needed! I shudder to think about how many people I interviewed while I was a supermarket manager in the ’80s. I’m sure my interview techniques caused me to miss some great people and also caused me to hire losers. Make the investment to develop key capabilities of a quality interviewer to help ensure the hires you make tend to produce longer-tenure, more productive employees.

Tony Orlando
Member
7 years ago

Living in a small town has it plus and minuses. One of the good things is that I can find some very good employees from our area, as you get to know most of the families that live near you. My basic requirements for employees are a couple of things. Number one, can you show up on time? Number two, you must be able to be extremely friendly to the customers. Number three, honesty, which is something that all of us want. For the most part we have done well, with some bad experiences along the way.

My help will come to me and offer up someone they know who might fit the bill in our store for a position and it has helped many times over the years. I also have gone to the high schools to help for Reality Days, and ended up finding some great young kids who have worked out quite well.

I know there are many other ways, and it can get more complicated as the size and scope of the business has different needs, but my basic requirements work for me. Training is something that we always have do do better at, and how can you expect results without showing someone how to do the job the right way? It is important to lead by example.

I stress customer service big time, as there is no excuse for rudeness or general lack of paying attention to the needs of the customer, which I won’t put up with. That is my simple take on this, and hiring can be a real pain for someone in a highly technical business, but I wish you all well in finding the right person.

Max Goldberg
7 years ago

I’d add pay a living wage, treat employees with respect, empower employees to make customers happy, give employees a path for growth and then tell the world about it. When a retailer has a reputation of treating its employees well, word gets around, employee turnover goes down, and efforts to recruit new employees are more successful. Too often retail is seen as a dead end job or a stepping stone to something else.

David Livingston
7 years ago

The article is just common sense suggestions. Retail workers are like race horses or baseball players. There are difference classes and levels and they are compensated accordingly. Sure as a retailer we all want the Costco-type worker. One who is young, fit, good looking and quick on their feet. To get that kind of worker you have to pay them a decent wage. Period.

Mel Kleiman
Member
Reply to  David Livingston
7 years ago

I have to disagree with one part of this comment. Costco-type workers are not all young, good looking, fit and quick on their feet and neither should the people hired all fit that mold.

Costco workers are positive, customer focused and don’t “say it’s not my job.” They are what I, in my program, call STARS — Self-motivated, Talented and trainable, Accountable, Reliable and Stable. These are all attitudes, not elements of appearance or even skills. Smart retailers hire for attitude and train for skills.

Ed Rosenbaum
Ed Rosenbaum
Member
Reply to  Mel Kleiman
7 years ago

Costco is a good example of good hiring practices in action. You can easily see the training has been special. They have learned how to interact effectively with the customers.

Shep Hyken
Active Member
7 years ago

I like all of these ideas, especially number seven, “working the floor as part of the interview.” One idea to add would be to have the applicant come in a few minutes early (or anytime before the interview) and check out the store — almost like mystery shopping (although they don’t really have to buy). During the interview, ask for any feedback or observations.

Mel Kleiman
Member
7 years ago

Before I wrote this response to the question above I wrote a response to one of the other comments where I talked about how smart employers don’t hire for skill they hire for attitude.

When it comes to just the recruiting piece there are some great ideas in the list above. To expand on it just a little because there are over 100 ideas on how to recruit great front-line employees:

  1. Always be looking for your next employee. Don’t go shopping for employees when you are hungry.
  2. Every applicant at your interview is worth two or three more applicants. All you have to do is tell them you want to talk to people they work with, not people they work for.
  3. Adopt a high school in your area and support them and you can get some great employees.
  4. Call the great employee who have left you and see if you can get them to come back.

Two additional tips:

  1. Make it very easy for applicants to apply but make the job hard to get.
  2. The best way to reduce your hiring needs is to keep your great employees longer. Treat they like gold because they are the ones that make you the gold.

Read the book “Hire Tough Manage Easy.”

Peter Charness
Trusted Member
7 years ago

The introduction should have included amazing people “who want to work in retail.” I feel for the recruiters. The other tip would be ABS: Always Be Selling. Job number one is to get the candidate excited about working for the company. Job number two is to determine if you want them. Even if the candidate isn’t a fit, chances are they’ll be talking to friends, who will talk to others.

Ed Rosenbaum
Ed Rosenbaum
Member
7 years ago

My friends who have responded have done an excellent job responding to finding and hiring the right people. The job does not end there. In fact, it has just begun. Once we have found and hired who we think is right for us, we need to train them in “our way of doing business.” Tony laid it out for us in his comments.

Training means being on the floor with them, showing how to do it the right way. It does not always mean assigning them to someone and disappearing, thinking it is up to someone else. If you want this person to be successful, you have to follow the development and training to make sure it happens.

It goes back to “managing by walking around.” Be there for the new person. Let them know they have not become a number because you hired them. They also want more than just a job. They can get that anywhere. Make your “job” and your recruits special.

Lesley Everett
Lesley Everett
7 years ago

Another idea is to do group interviews with some team activities — how they come across on their own in an interview could be very different to how they operate in a group. Some crucial insight will come through — for example: competitiveness, respect for others, how they interact, their interest in others, etc.

Patricia Vekich Waldron
Active Member
7 years ago

Some really good tips from Doug on the hiring process. But that is only part of the issue — retailers must value employees and treat them as brand ambassadors. This means paying, respecting and involving associates in operations. Qualified and satisfied employees should be retailers’ main objective.

After all, people still buy from people.

Craig Sundstrom
Craig Sundstrom
Noble Member
7 years ago

Funny: unless I missed something, “paying people well” isn’t on the list … is that just so obvious it doesn’t need to be mentioned?