Employees at your resale location manage day-to-day operations and represent your brand and your business. They interact daily with customers to provide service, mitigate issues and create positive buying experiences.
With employees taking on such a central role, it’s important to devote time to developing hiring best practices to ensure you are finding the top talent for your business. These tips can help you recruit the right employees for your resale shop.
1. Develop a Clear Job Description
Up to 45 percent of small businesses find too few qualified job applicants. An easy-to-read, easy-to-find job description is a crucial part of the hiring process. Be sure your job opening is seen by the candidates you want to attract. A strong online presence is important, since most applicants will search the internet for openings.
Avoid a lot of jargon in your description –more general job titles and descriptions will encourage your listing to rank in more searches and reach a higher volume of candidates. Be clear and concise, and give candidates the proper expectations through the job description. Honing in on the qualities you’re searching for and cleaning up your job descriptions can attract more quality applicants.
2. Ask the Right Questions
Take time to develop targeted interview questions that provide evidence of previous experience. Ask questions that will highlight candidates’ intangible skills like teamwork, integrity and trustworthiness. These attributes can prove to be more important than technical skills. It’s easier to teach a new hire to use a POS system than to develop his or her communication skills.
Particularly with resale, you’ll want to assess candidate’s ability to buy inventory, assist customers and complete sales. Include some situational questions, as these often produce more candid answers and exemplify employee experience. A good interview strategy will help you organize the candidate pool and simplify the hiring process.
3. Continuously Recruit
Waiting until you have an open position to start the hiring process puts you and your business at a disadvantage. It can slow down the process, especially if an opening causes a staff shortage or arises during a busy retail holiday.
Recruiting continuously means when a position does open up you’ll already have a developed job description, listing and candidate pool to choose from. Not only does it standardize and speed up the process, it can yield higher quality hires. A rushed interview process can lead to a wrong hire, lengthening the process even more.
Additionally, being prepared and organized is a crucial part of hiring and retaining employees. Take time to collect feedback from those who have gone through the hiring process, whether they were hired or not. Take note of what they liked and what may be barriers to applicants considering your business. Update your hiring practices as needed to attract and hire the best candidates.
Winmark offers support to franchisees to help them establish the best hiring practices and ensure they’re staffing their stores with the most qualified individuals. At the same time, the Winmark’s franchise model provides training resources for positions ranging from sales associate to manager, helping you cultivate the talent you bring onboard. These are just a few of the processes that Winmark helps franchisees manage to help them succeed as business owners.
If you’re interested in the resale industry and want to learn more about resale franchise opportunities with Winmark, visit our website.
