How do you find good people?

It's a weird job market. Who wants to work retail right now?

Welcome. I’m Katherine Raz. I own a shop in Tacoma, Washington called The Fernseed and this is my newsletter about running an independent retail business in the age of Amazon. If you’re a shop owner, or you sell products to small retail businesses, or you’re just curious what this whole business is about, you’re in the right place. (And if this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive it yourself right here. It’s free!)

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Nia on her first day at Fernseed, August, 2021

This past weekend I got invited to an informal but powerful women-in-business brunch, thrown by one of my favorite Tacoma-area business owners (whose business is across the street from one of my shops and in front of whom I have had a couple of what-the-heck-am-I-even-doing micro meltdowns). There really is nothing like enjoying a catered meal with a group of women businesses owners who are also dealing with an unprecedented set of challenges, but who are fully capable of blurting out the exact inspiring thing you needed to hear in this moment. In short, it was healing.

Someone at the brunch asked me a great question: how do I find good people? Where do I post job listings, and what is my interviewing process?

Let me start by saying that while I think I’ve dialed in a decent hiring process, I need to work on retention. It’s one thing to find good people, it’s another thing to hold on to them. We’ve experienced 100% turnover in the past 12 months. Some of this is pandemic-related, some of it isn’t. The average turnover in retail is high—slightly above 60 percent—so I’m not doing terribly. But I’m working on it, and I’ll definitely address turnover (and the reasons for it) in a future post.

I know lots of retail and product-based businesses are struggling to find people right now. I’m happy to say that of all the challenges we currently face in business, and there are a lot, finding good people has never been an issue. When I say this, people typically assume we hire off Instagram. We do not. (I’ll get into why in a moment.) I always start our hiring process on Craigslist and Indeed.

A decade ago I co-owned a vintage market business with one of the most interesting and talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, a multipotentialite (my assessment) named Libby Alexander. We met because she commented on a blog I had at the time. During the course of our friendship, she’d randomly send me Craigslist job postings the way some people share real estate listings. She lived on the Craigslist job postings, because you never know, right? So I always start with Craigslist, which is now being eclipsed by Indeed, because I figure if a person like Libby is out there looking for random, interesting work, there are hundreds just like her scanning those listings doing the same.

I post to Craigslist and Indeed because I want to connect with people who:

• value their outside interests and freedom

• seek jobs that allow them flexibility to pursue those outside interests

• are actively seeking out work opportunities

We also post the fact that we’re hiring to Instagram and Facebook, but I’m more interested in connecting first with people who were looking for jobs to begin with, not just the people who think they want to work for us. It’s also important to me to hire outside of our immediate circle of followers, which is one of my commitments to diversity in our hiring process.

Not a week goes by in the shop where I don’t have a conversation with a customer who says they’d love to work in a plant shop. 🚩🚩🚩 The perception of this job is different from the reality. People think they’re watering plants all day in a green paradise. The reality is you’re juggling a pallet delivery, a UPS pickup, a floral phone order, and a customer who’d like 7 plants potted all at once. Plants are dirty. Flowers are messy and require a lot of prep work. And our customers require a lot of personal attention (I always say, “We have to provide Tiffany’s-level customer service for a $19 plant purchase.” And that’s accurate.) So how do we find people who have the capability of navigating all that at once?

To start with, I look at job history. In particular, I’m looking for the following:

• Someone who has worked at a job that required intense back-end labor with polished, front-end finesse (restaurants, catering, hospitality, nursing, coffee shops, bakeries, bars, and, yes, flower shops)

• Someone who has worked more than a year at a non-glamorous job (fast food, doggy daycare, hotel cleaning, dollar store, etc.)

• Someone who has maintained some kind of outside creative interest while also working at a non-glamorous job (Depop or Etsy shop, YouTube channel, blog, music, performance, illustration, crafting, etc.)

I don’t expect or require cover letters (applying for jobs is arduous, I get it), but a few short sentences on how they think their skills will translate to the job we’ve posted always helps.

I do not hire people based on floral design or plant experience. These things can be taught! Instead, I look for people who have:

• A working knowledge of color theory and design (which can come from anything from graphic design or illustration to curating vintage clothing)

• A job history that includes a role where they had to learn something on the fly, then present it back to the customer in a way that demonstrates their expertise (a great example here is Amelia, our former GM, who worked at a vitamin supplement store)

• A job history that includes having to build or make something in front of the customer — anything from making a Subway sub to lighting food or drinks on fire at table

• Bonus: a job history that includes experience working unsupervised or having to make things up as you go (my best example here is our former operations manager who worked for FEMA, the essence of popping up somewhere and immediately having a sturdy operations plan in place)

In short, I’m looking for a history of hard work, plus outside creative pursuits, plus front-end finesse, all with the ability to manage random things happening on the fly.

To ensure that whomever we’re considering hiring has relatively decent computer experience, I do three things:

• Ask them to book a pre-interview time using Calendly

• See that they’ve accepted a Google calendar request

• Conduct a pre-interview via Google Hangouts

This is a “show, don’t tell” process. You can’t tell me you have computer experience, but if you can do those three things, I can assume you’ll be okay using Slack, which our team uses for internal communication, or responding to customers via email.

Next, the interview questions.

Over three years, I think I’ve done a pretty good job asking questions that get me to the information I want without directly asking for the information. For example, you can’t ask someone, “Are you comfortable working in high-pressure environments?” Of course they’ll say yes. Instead, I’ll ask, “Tell me about a time when something unexpected happened on the job, and you had to handle whatever mess it created.”

To understand how they’ll handle working for a small business that sometimes requires a lot of them, and involves working on a team of “personalities,” I’ll ask:

• In your previous job: what’s a thing your former employer did well? What is something they could have improved upon?

• Describe your ideal co-worker (credit to Amelia for this question).

• What was the biggest learning you had professionally and personally from your most recent (or most relevant) job?

To understand how they’ll handle customer service, I’ll ask:

• What kind of customer presents the biggest challenge for you? (again: Amelia)

• Tell me about a time when you had an upset customer and you, personally, really turned it around.

• Describe the type of service you like to receive as a customer (Amelia).

• What do you say to a customer you may have already checked in with when they entered the store, but who has been hanging out while you’ve been chatting with other customers/ringing someone out?

• Tell me about a product or service from a previous job that you’ve had to explain to a customer (wine list, camping gear, whatever). Walk me through that sales process.

To understand that they’ve done some homework, and know who we are, I’ll ask:

• You’ve been to our shop before. What’s an improvement you would make?

• What do you think you would enjoy about working here?

• Is there anything you think you might find challenging about working here, especially in your first few weeks?

Finally, I have two favorite questions that get to the meat of what it is to work at Fernseed.

First: What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever had to do regularly do at a job?

The answer to this question tells me a few things: one, that they’ve gotten their hands dirty dealing with stuff no one wants to deal with.

Two, depending on how they answer, they’re aware of what is and isn’t appropriate to talk about in an interview setting. For example, one of our current staff used to work at a thrift store. Before answering she asked if it was okay to bring up human waste in this part of the interview. “Absolutely, yes!” I told her. (I think you might have an idea of what her answer was—and after shopping at thrift stores for decades I certainly did—but in case you don’t.) She had an answer, AND she maintained an awareness that her answer crossed a line most people don’t want to cross in business setting.

The final thing I get from whatever someone’s answer is is how they respond. In another example, one of our former retail staff answered that cleaning food off people’s plates at a restaurant is pretty disgusting, “but hey, that’s part of the job, right?” Great answer.

My final favorite question, and we don’t always ask this, but I like to throw it in there, is my version of the “Mario Test,” a little gem of screenwriting from the 1993 DeNiro movie A Bronx Tale. The idea behind the Mario test was to see whether or not your date was a kind, capable person by putting them through a test of character. The movie takes places in the 1960s before automatic car locks were a thing. The “test” involved opening the passenger door for your date, then walking around behind the car to see if they reached over and unlocked the driver side door for you, as a courtesy.

So here’s my interview “Mario test” question:

You’re at the shop and you hear water running. You run to the back to check what’s happening and you see the toilet is overflowing. It’s a clean overflow (let’s imagine there’s nothing in there but water), but nevertheless water is getting all over the bathroom floor, and fast. What do you do in this situation?

Their answer tells me more about a person than I’ll ever get to know after weeks working with them.

Some people say they’ll call the building management, or a manager. Others will say “find a plunger.” Sure, okay, that works. Maybe.

It’s not like I won’t hire someone who answers in this way! I get it. It’s a weird question. Most of us have been renters most of our lives. And of course there’s a disconnect between what you can think to answer on the spot in an interview versus how you would react in reality.

But the right answer, which I’ve heard only two times in the course of interviewing, is this:

I turn off the water.

image courtesy Sunshine Plumbing and Gas

Yeah, you do! You shut that valve right off!

I love to hire people who know there’s a such thing as a water shut off valve, because it means they’re likely to be able to handle other situations as they occur. And OH, they occur. Like the fire department stopping by to ensure we have fire extinguishers installed in the right places. Or the power going out. Or the ceiling leaking.

These are the people I want to hire over people who think it would be fun to play with plants all day. And they’re out there! I’ve been lucky enough to hire quite a few of them.

As I mentioned, I will address what I’ve learned about hanging on to those amazing people in a future post.

I would love to hear about your own amazing interview questions or hiring practices. Feel like sharing?