Essential criteria for selecting your team

Every minute you spend selecting your team is time extremely well invested. Staff turnover is constant in a store, and for all sorts of reasons people set themselves new goals.

HR teams can’t cover every hiring need that comes up on the shop floor. A team whose members change very frequently is an unstable team.

Running a selection process isn’t easy; it’s a key process that matters in many ways. A poorly run process leads to:

• Wasted time invested in training
• A bad atmosphere within the team
• A poor customer experience
• Damage to the brand’s image
• Loss of credibility for the store manager

Selecting your team: the process

Recruitment is the process followed to hire an employee, evaluating their qualities, knowledge, skills and experience.

The steps to run a professional selection process are:

1. Have the job description
2. Have recruitment sources lined up
3. Screen the CVs
4. Run selection tests: phone interview / in-person interview

1. Job description:

It includes:

• The purpose of the role
• The duties to be performed
• The knowledge and experience required
• Competencies and aptitudes
• The minimum training required

You can find different templates online and build out the roles for your own store.

2. Recruitment sources:

Choose different websites or job boards where you can advertise the vacancy.

3. CV screening:

Add a set of questions known as “Killer Questions” that will help you quickly rule out candidates by filtering for basic requirements.

4. Selection tests

1. Phone interview: first contact

• Verify the information on the CV (personal details, education and career history)
• Gauge the candidate’s interest, whether it’s genuine or not.
• Find out their availability, focusing on schedule, expected salary and start date.
• Current employment situation

2. In-person interview

Here we can dig deeper with more specific questions and read non-verbal language (gestures and signals, since they can reinforce or contradict what the person is saying).

You should read the CV before the interview and set up a good place to hold it.

How the interview unfolds:

• Introduce yourself so the candidate knows who they’re talking to.
• Explain how the interview will work, how it starts and how it ends.
• Check the most relevant details on the CV.
• Start by asking what they know about the company, to see whether they’ve prepared for the interview.
• Ask them to tell you about their education and professional experience, and assess whether it fits the role you need to fill.
• Ask about their professional expectations to see whether they’re a good match.
• Probe how well they know the products your store sells.
• Ask for a self-assessment.
• Give the candidate the chance to ask any questions they may have.
• Close the interview and walk the candidate to the door.

10 key questions for selecting your team:

1. Why are you looking for another job? (if they currently work somewhere else)
2. Why did you decide to do that course of study?
3. Why and how did that job come to an end?
4. If you could repeat any professional experience, which one would you choose?
5. What kind of job are you looking for?
6. Imagine you were the interviewer: what kind of people would you look for?
7. Do you think the customer is always right?
8. If I spoke with a colleague who has worked with you, what would they tell me about you?
9. Tell me something you need to improve on.
10. Before we finish, do you have any questions?

10 mistakes interviewers make:

• Not using the right recruitment sources
• Not preparing for the interview
• Keeping the wrong attitude
• Showing up late
• Not listening
• Not letting the candidate speak
• Creating false expectations
• Making value judgements that bias the candidate
• Holding prejudices
• Not offering a timeframe for a response

The welcome:

New hires are very likely not to be welcomed properly, because everyone is so busy. You should think about how you would like your own first day to be.

It’s important to create a document that contains everything needed for a good welcome:

• Who greets the new colleague, at what time and where.

• The materials or tools they’ll need.

• Training plan: put together a roadmap of the milestones they need to reach.

• Include follow-up meetings.

The importance of hiring the right person:

A poorly conducted interview leads us to hire the wrong person. In the short term it’s hard to spot, but over time it can create problems that hurt how the store runs.

If you don’t realise what the causes are, you’ll keep repeating the same mistake to fill the vacancy.

This post is drawn from Francisco Galán’s book, Dirige una Tienda con Éxito (Run a Successful Store).