Finding the right person (or people) to fit into your team, with the right skills and particularly the right attitude is extremely challenging. I have spoken a lot about the challenges of hiring people with the right skills yet the wrong attitude, this is a recipe for disaster. Yes they can do the job and bring in lots of product knowledge but if their attitude stinks, they can bring the rest of the team down and make it very hard for you to manage.
It is also important to determine what the right fit for your business is. What sort of person are you looking for and how will you know when you see them.
I wanted to share two recruitment video tips with you. The first tip is identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your current team:
As you can see in the video, by spending time doing this, before you go out to the market, you will have a much better understanding of what sort of person you need. By carrying out this activity you will have identified some weaknesses and can therefore focus on finding the person to fill these gaps. This strengths and weaknesses analysis is the first step in defining who the “right” person is.
Once we know who we are looking for, we need to narrow this down even more by completing a person description:
Most retailers have job descriptions defining the steps required to complete the role, but very few have a person description. This is a list of attributes that this ideal person will have such as:
Essential personality requirements will be – smiling, maintaining eye contact, initiating conversations.
Other attributes under experience could include previous customer service experience, however this should be a nice to have. The most essential area here for a customer facing role is the personality requirements, because you can’t train these. You can train someone with product knowledge and all of your processes.
Hope you find the two video tips helpful.
Roger Simpson – CEO, The Retail Solution and Author of “The Retail Solution” With over 35 years’ industry experience, Roger Simpson is recognized as Australia’s #1 Authority on customer ROI in the retail industry and as a global expert on staff coaching, customer service and selling skills.
