Prior to its opening, I was asked to visit a franchise to evaluate the new crew. I discovered the team members were bland, boring, and reticent.
None of them were customer-focused.
Without that focus, in particular, the store would fail disastrously.
When I asked the small business owner why he hired them, he explained that with a background of hiring for a set of convenience stores, “I just wanted to be sure they wouldn’t steal from me.”
While the chances of a great hire are about 50%, many employers continue to pick the wrong employee over and over.
How does it happen?
Easy, you only hire someone with previous experience. The logic goes, they know the business and I won’t have to train them.
That’s terrible thinking no matter what you are selling.
Competitors’ leftovers are not what to look for when hiring an employee. They rarely are superstars, and you’ll be bringing their worst habits into the heart of your operations.
And your belief you won’t have to train them will let them get away with it.
My first tip for you is that you would be much better off to hire someone out of your industry and teach them how to sell in your store, the way you want them to, without preconceptions about customers.
Retail store hiring is tougher than it appears and the results of a bad hire can be disastrous for your store.
How to hire great employees for your store
These tips will help you spot toxic behavior, resistance to training and self-improvement, and weed out bad applicants. Use these strategies to double-check your gut feeling and verify the people you’re talking to are genuinely passionate about what you do.
1. Hire to work more hours, more shifts
While the contrary advice is in vogue to hire lots of part-timers to maximize your flexibility, you often have more associates who are disengaged from your brand’s success.
That’s because if they are working two or three jobs, they don’t have the time to settle into your culture.
2. Look for employees who will play well with others
While it’s great your applicants have outside interests and hobbies, many times they are online or solo. Retail requires the exact opposite.
You want to find evidence they are engaged in the real world with other human beings during your interview so craft your questions accordingly.
3. Past behavior determines future behavior
I’m all for goals and plans of what someone hopes to do in their future, but interview questions about their future plans are a poor gauge of how an applicant will work in your business today.
Form your interview questions around specifics. If they can’t give you such details, it is rare they will do that for your customers.
Likewise, when they can tell you specifics based on their past, they know what that desired behavior looks like and how to deliver it.
4. Sell them on why you’re a great place to work
It’s not enough to grill new applicants – you have to sell them. Talk about your history, how you view the environment you have created for your customers, what remarkable service looks like, how you want customers to feel, and your management style.
This is one of the most forgotten aspects of hiring but the truly great applicants will see how you are a fit for their personal style of working and be more inclined to take a job, should you decide to offer it to them.
5. Don’t trust your gut
How to hire good employees starts with picking out the posers. Throwing curveballs will force them to give an honest, unrehearsed reply.
If an applicant is telling you everything you wanted to hear about their abilities, successes, and how they’ll put that to work with you – find something not to like about them.
Gut instincts can trip you up so ask something like, “I’m sure you can agree no one is perfect. Can you give me a time you didn’t give great customer service and how you handled it?”
Great employees can pinpoint such a time and tell you what they’d have done differently or how it was resolved. The poor employees will just tell you it never happened.
6. Hire after a cooling-off period
You’ve had that experience when you meet someone who just clicks. Don’t hire on the spot! Have them call you back at 4 pm the next day.
- After you’ve called references.
- After you’ve seen other people.
- After they’ve had a chance to sweat a bit whether you will hire them.
That keeps you firmly in control as an employer.
As to that franchisee, we worked with him to see how he needed more extroverts, helped him craft questions related to something other than theft and as a result, he hired a whole new crew before successfully opening his doors.
Retail recruitment strategies
A bike shop I know takes a potential new hire to the kids’ bike area and asks them about the first time they rode a bike.
If they can remember, and share the feeling – the sense of freedom – it’s a good final sign this is a potential great fit.
Note that the applicant didn’t have to try to sell the interviewer on a bike or be quizzed about product features; the bike shop just wanted to see if the potential new hire could empathize with a new owner.
Potential and passion. This is what to look for when hiring an employee.
Where to hire employees for your store
Great retail associates are out there looking for great employers. Craft your questions well, give them more attention and train them to exceed customers’ expectations. That’s how you grow your brick-and-mortar business.
I’ve added a complete course on How To Hire Smarter on my online sales training program SalesRX.com.
We are pleased to mention that the author Bob Phibbs the Retail Doctor (who has contributed to BRA with outstanding articles like this one and so many others that we have reposted over the past year) is now a Supporting Vendor Partner of BRA. We value his relevant retail insight and encourage you to learn more about his offerings by clicking on the following link to his website: www.retaildoc.com
– Doug Works, Executive Director BRA
Want to dive deeper into solutions to attracting and retaining the best staff for your shop? Check this out:
Topic: Talent Acquisition: Building a Team Structured for Success in 2022
Description: For indie retailers, the strength of your internal team depends on your ability to recruit capable employees and develop the training required to effectively service your customers. When you compound the wide variety of new skills (both digital and in-store) retailers were expected to master after the COVID shift, the bar was raised considerably for incoming talent.
How can independent retailers meet these demands and build a team structured for success in 2022? Join our live panel discussion with Kim Pagano from PUBLIK IMAGE and Doug Works from Board Retailers Association on Tuesday, March 15th at 10:00am PT as we break down the strategies that are helping retailers overcome these challenges.
Time: Tuesday, Mar 15, 2022 10:00 AM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Register now (everyone who registers will be able to access the webinar on-demand even if you cannot attend in-person) by clicking on the following link: Register Here
If you are not already a BRA Retail Member, you can easily opt in to either Regular (no cost) or Distinguished ($100/yr.) Membership via this super simple join form