Regional grocery stores face a unique set of hiring challenges. From stockers to cashiers to deli workers, employees are the face and voice of your company brand. But with turnover at 39%, those faces might be changing too often to make a positive impact. Putting care into who you hire – from considering your ideal candidate, tailoring your hiring process, and understanding the affect great employees have on your business – you can build a talented team and a loyal patron base.
The Ideal Candidate
Filling positions for each store and each department involves more reflection than hiring the first person who walks through the door. What are the specific requirements of each position? Will a hire be routinely lifting heavy boxes? Do they need to be able to upsell customers? How flexible does this employee need to be when it comes to working late/early hours or on weekends?
After you have the requirements outlined, you can consider soft skills necessary for each position. A cashier needs to rank high in service-orientation and emotional stability, where other roles you might focus more on detail-orientation or sales potential. Taking a look at current top performers is a good place to start.
The Hiring Process
The hiring process should be tailored to the position you’re hiring. Pre-screen questions and personality assessments are two steps that will likely be helpful when recruiting for any position. Pre-screen questions allow managers to only focus their efforts on evaluating candidates who meet the basic qualifications to perform the job effectively. Personality assessments can help managers get a better sense of who the candidate is and if they have similar characteristics of other employees who have been valuable to your regional grocery store.
A successful hiring process is neither based on gut feeling or uniform across all departments. While your stores should have common pillars in the process, take the opportunity to use your knowledge about the ideal candidate and the position to tailor the process. For example, would the evaluation benefit from a job shadow or a role play? What step can you add to your process that ensures you are hiring the right candidates for that department?
Once you’ve decided what a successful hiring process looks like, stick to it. Consistency in hiring – from the questions asked to the competencies measured – helps you predictably make better hires. When you take the care to make better hiring decisions upfront, you reduce your turnover and ultimately impact your bottom line.
CareerPlug Can Help
CareerPlug works with numerous multi-location businesses to streamline their hiring process to make better hires and reduce employee turnover. Learn more about the impact CareerPlug can make on your business here: ebook.
