(But… many salons “Hire” their problems!)
Ever wonder why an employee who you’ve hired, now seems to be some form of alien life, has not shown up for their shift for the 4th time in the last month? If you own your own salon or you’re a successful salon manager, you know that “showing up” is at least 50% of success. Why do some employees seem to become so worthless in basic work values? Well, take comfort in the fact that most of the time it’s not your fault. You didn’t hire a terrific worker and somehow your influence caused them to be work value ‘aliens.’ (Although that does happen with some caustic bosses. Remember that boss spelt backwards is double SOB!). Chances are very strong, and research shows that most of those issues you’re seeing with that poor employee they had when they walked thru door to ask for the job. The key to separating the bad ones from the good applicants is still the face-to-face interview. Within that interview should be the questions that tell you something about their values and capabilities. But most interviews in the indoor tanning business utilize close ended questions such as “Do you like working with people?” “Duh… yes.”
How about asking “Please tell me about a time in your history of working in retail (Don’t hire retail rookies for your own sanity) when a customer was irate and you had to find a way to deflate their anger and send them home happy?” Don’t ask “what would you do” in that circumstance but “What did you do?” Past performance and current attitudes is the best predictor of future performances.
Another good one is “Please tell me about a time when you were at odds with a fellow employee and how you and he/she resolved the issue?” That focuses big time on their desire and actual success at collaboration with their peers and may give you a hint if this applicant will honor their commitments to help others on the job and if they might be more apt to help fill in shifts that need help. Also, it may show that they can admit that they’ve had a conflict or two and if they worked thru it and how they did it. Indoor tanning is full of conflicts! In addition both of those first two questions can start you down the road to determining if they can sell themselves and their points of view. That can take anyone a long way to getting tanning customers to step up their financial commitment in your salon business. It’s SELLING!
How about “Describe for me the best boss you’ve ever worked for?” A blank stare is OK because many people aren’t ready to answer a question like that but you can come back to it later in the interview. Eventually they need to have a description that hopefully parallels who you are as a boss. Someone who says they are happiest always working independently without supervision may not be good at redirection and advanced training.
There are many great interview questions and the critical step to your interview is to organize several questions BEFORE you sit down with someone to determine their worthiness to work in your salon. Several questions could come from their application information… which if the application is not complete that tells you all you need for the interview… which is don’t interview anyone who does not think enough about your open position opportunity to commit enough in completely filling in the app form.
