Arleen Quigg, head of Cpl Retail (market leader in the recruitment of retail staff in Ireland) provides information to employers documenting how to interview and hire retail staff. We hope you find this information useful and for more information or to contact Cpl Retail, visit www.cpl.ie or phone (+353) 01 614 6000. Enjoy!

1. How to Interview effectively in Retail
Arleen Quigg
Manager CPL Retail
May 2012

2. Agenda
• Why Train on interviewing
• Are you Hiring the Best and the 80/20 rule
• The Steps and Model of an Interview
• Introductory, Personality and Retail Gathering
Questions
• What are Competencies
• The Retail Model to Values and Competencies
• Questioning Guidelines
• Becoming Better Interviewers
• The Results

3. Why Train On Interviewing?
• Develop your confidence in interviewing
• Gain a better insight into your
Candidates
• Ability to provide an added-value
service to your customers
• Ensure positive candidate experience
• Aware of appropriate questioning
guidelines

4. Are You Hiring The Best?
• Best Candidates • Best Employees
– Good first impressions – Achieve, exceed results
– Prepared, on-time – Committed – don’t give up
– Seem interested – Always prepare fully
– Friendly, out-going – Go out of way to help others
– Give complete responses – Initiative to improve things
– Have skills and experience – Plan, organize, anticipate
you want – Initiative to learn
– Assertive, confident – Work well with others
– Well-groomed – Creative
– Education – Problem solvers
– Take feedback

6. Before the Interview
• Arrange a quiet room with no
distractions or phones
• Be prepared – read relevant job
description, fully read the CV.
• Develop 1 - 2 questions per core
competency
• Determine if other hiring managers,
colleagues should meet the candidate

7. During the Interview
• Primary job is to gather enough data to make a
recommendation
• Use a Structured Interview
• Evaluate candidate on competencies and skills
versus style and personality
• Remember the 80/20 rule

8. During the Interview
• Build Rapport
• Listen Actively
• Take notes discreetly
• Finish on time

9. After the Interview
•Thank candidate for his/her
time
• Complete written feedback
within 30 – 60 minutes

10. Interview Model – under an hour
• Introduction (3-5 mins)
– Build rapport
• CV Gathering Information (10-15 mins)
• Competency gathering stage (15-20
mins)
• Closing (10 mins)
– Answer questions
– Explain next steps

12. Introduction Questions
• Why are you currently looking for a new position?
• What are your needs for your next role?
• What needs are not being met by your current
employer?
• Tell me about yourself.
• Run me through your CV and the motivator to
move in each position.
• Salary needs
• Travel required.

14. Retail CV Gathering Questions
• Size of store(s)?
• Number of staff including managers?
• How many direct reports?
• Turnover in store and or department
• Why the move from Employer X to Y
• What were your responsibilities in each
role?
• What was average monthly or predicted
yearly turnover of your store. ?

15. Personality Questions
• How would you describe your management style?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• How would your friends and colleagues describe
you?
• How do you deal with pressure?
• What would you consider to be your greatest
achievement to date?
• What is the toughest decision you have had to
make?
• What motivates you?

16. What are Competencies?
• Competency is an area of knowledge or skill that is
critical for being successful on the job for:
– Outputs/deliverables
– Behaviors
– Performance characteristics
• A competency is observable, measurable, realistic,
time-bound, and job-related
• Competencies are linked to organizational success
that leads to long term retention
• Focused set of behaviors that differentiate
outstanding from typical performance

17. Successful Retail Hire Model
Comps Must
Retail
Profession Related
Be Present
FIRST
= Functional
Core Comps Skills
Product Customer
Leadership Commercial Planning & Team
Knowledge Service
& Mgt . & Sales Organising Work
Driven
Hard High
Passionate Flexible Personable
Working Energy
Core Talents
& Company
Values = FOUNDATION

23. Behavioral Interviewing
• The basic premise – a candidate’s recent, relevant
past performance is the best predictor of future
performance
• Provides a pattern of behavior or evidence to judge
candidate’s ability and willingness to perform the
job
• Look for answers that demonstrate
long-standing behaviors
• Always open-ended

24. We Want S.T.A.R.S.
• Probe for evidence of:
– Situation/Task – overview of the
situation/task/project/role
– Action – details, actions taken, others
involved
• What, Why’s and How’s – use open-ended questions
– Results
• Accomplishments – results, successes
• Roadblocks – challenges, obstacles
– Self-Appraisal – self-evaluation

25. Traditional Vs. Behavioral Style
• Traditional: “How would you handle a
difficult customer?”
• Behavioral: “Give me a specific
example of a time when you had to
work with a difficult customer”
– Follow up with probing questions
– Probe actual, concrete examples

26. Behavioral Questions
• Describe a situation in which you were able to use
persuasion to successfully convince someone to
see things your way.
• Describe an instance when you had to think on
your feet to extricate yourself from a difficult
situation.
• By providing examples, convince me that you can
adapt to a wide variety of people, situations and
environments.

27. Behavioral Questions
• Tell me about a time in which you had to use
your written communications skills in order
to get an important point across.
• Give me an example of an goal that you had
set in the past and tell me about your success in
reaching it.
• Tell me about a time when you had to go above
and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job
done.

29. Drilling Down With Probing
• Probing questions ensure comprehensive
evaluation
• “What, “why,” and “how” require the
candidate to:
– Describe in detail what actions he/she took?
• What – knowledge, skills and experiences
– Describe how he/she acted in past situations?
• How – tactical skills and ability to work in
retail
– Describe thinking behind actions?
• Why – strategic thinking

31. Sample Probing - Drilling Down
“Tell me about a situation when
there was a conflict on your team?”
Follow-up probing questions
–What was your role at the time?
–Please outline the situation and who else
was involved
–How did you handle the problem –
outline the actions you took

32. Sample Probing - Drilling Down
–How did you engage or motivate and
influence others to help solve the problem?
–Why did you approach it this way?
–What was the biggest challenge that you
faced?
–How did you overcome this challenge?
–What was the outcome?
– Looking back, what could you have done
differently?

33. Leadership
& Mgt .
Product Customer
Commercial Planning & Team
Knowledge Service
& Sales Organising Work
Driven

34. Leadership Questions
Can you give me an example of:
• Where you have been required to show
resilience in order to overcome a
difficult situation or tough trading
conditions?
• When you have empowered your team
or an individual in order to gain
commitment for completing a task?

35. People Management Questions
Can you give me an example of :
• How you train and develop your staff?
• How you ensure that all your team have had the
appropriate training for their roles?
• What do you do to motivate your team?
• When you had a poor performer, what did you
do to rectify the situation?
• When you had issue with staff turnover, and
how did you control this?

36. Product
Knowledge
Customer
Leadership Commercial Planning & Team
Service
& Mgt . & Sales Organising Work
Driven

37. Product Knowledge
Can you give me an example of:
• The products or brands you sold and which
were your top sellers and why?
• Of products or brands that you tried to link
sales with?
• What products you sold and what how did
you use your product knowledge of this
product to sell it to the customer?

38. Commercial
& Sales
Product Customer
Leadership Planning & Team
Knowledge Service
& Mgt . Organising Work
Driven

39. Commerciality & Sales
Can you give me an example of:
• A time that you made a change to the layout.
Why and what were the results?
• How you have influenced the sales/KPI’s in your
role?
• When you were down on your sales target, what
would you do turn this around/ to achieve them?
• How are you given your sales target and how do
you communicate that sales target to your sales
team.
• Who is you competition and how you try to
compete against them?

40. Customer
Service
Driven
Leadership Product Commercial Planning & Team
& Mgt . Knowledge & Sales Organising Work

41. Customer Service Questions
Can you give me an example of:
• When you have exceeded a customer’s expectations?
• When you have taken actions in the past to improve
customer service?
• when you have received praise relating to the levels of
customer service that you have delivered.
• Who is your customer? How do you go about
understanding their needs?
• How you intended to better service your customer? What
did you want to change?
• The last time you/or one of you team had a customer
complaint?

42. Planning &
Organising
Product Customer
Leadership Commercial Team
Knowledge Service
& Mgt . & Sales Work
Driven

43. Planning and Organising Questions
Can you give me an example of:
• When you had to take on extra work at short
notice, tell me about how you prioritised
tasks and what the outcome was?
• You had to monitor the progress of tasks or
projects?
• How do you plan & prioritise your time on a
day/weekly/monthly/annual basis?

44. Team
Work
Product Customer
Leadership Commercial Planning &
Knowledge Service
& Mgt . & Sales Organising
Driven

45. Teamwork Questions
Can you give me an example of:
• When you have had to launch a new business
initiative to the team. How did you launch it?
• Where you have taken over a new team and you
have improved team morale? What steps did
you take to understand your team and how did
you measure your success?
• When you have worked efficiently as part of a
team
• You worked with a team member with low
morale and how did you work effectively with
that person ?

47. Additional Types Of Interview
• Opening/Warm-Up
• Case Study/Scenario/Role Play
• Technical/Problem-Solving
• Assessment Centers
• Psychometric Testing
• Self-Appraisal

48. Appropriate & Inappropriate Questions
National origin Origin of name Pregnancy
Race or color Citizenship Religion
Affiliations to organizations Disability
Political ideology Age Physical characteristics
Rent or own home and location
Marital status Gender
Family/relatives
Military discharge/experience
Arrests/convictions Medical history
Sexual orientation Traveller Community

49. “an exceptional employee is
not just a little better than
someone who is pretty good
they are 100 times better”
Mark Zuckerberg “

50. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen
&v=S7kb6qK08tY

51. Name: Arleen Quigg
Title: Manager – Cpl Retail & HR
Phone: 01 614 6146071
087 239 1519
Email: Arleen.quigg@cpl.ie
Website: www.cpl.ie