How many times has a “not so sharp” job applicant slipped through your ever popular, air-tight, “I go with my gut feeling” interview process and wreaked havoc on your business, poisoned the moral of your other, more-dedicated staff and even more damaging, treated your guests with indifference as you helplessly stood by and watched the “profit and sales” part of the pie chart get smaller and smaller?
Even worse, how many times has a young, gifted, All-Star sales genius who could sell anything to anyone while making your guests feel like royalty ended up as Employee of the Month on your competitor’s team because you disqualified them as a candidate? Why? The candidate didn’t correctly answer one standard, age-old, useless and “vanilla” interview question: “Do you have retail sales experience?” The candidate in question (whom I recently met) answered, “No,” which was not entirely true, because she didn’t think the five years year she spent as a cashier and food server alongside her mom at a deli/gift shop qualified as retail experience. The question asked by the other salon owner – at the salon she now runs – was, “What were your favorite things to do growing up?” to which she replied, “Working with my mom and the other girls at the deli. We’d have contests for selling the most daily specials and I would usually win! The boss, my mom, the customers and the other servers would make the biggest deal about it and it always made me feel really good about myself.” Wow! Talk about a recipe for success! She had Sales, People, Team, Family and Work Skills plus confidence all gift wrapped for you, but you passed her right along to your competitor down the street.
Do you think the traditional model of finding Super Star Staff might be broken? Here are three new hiring concepts to help you find your Dream Team.
David is a National Educator for Sun Evolutions, offering brands including Supre Tan, ProTan, Fiesta Sun and Hempz. He is a face-to-face sales and beauty product fanatic who gauges his success solely on his effectiveness at selling real product to real, live salon guests.
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