The Right Fit

Tweet

It was McFarland's enthusiasm for the product that persuaded area sales manager Tim Brasfield to hire her to manage the Cary, N.C., store, despite her lack of experience in retail management. Her store exceeded its sales goals for 11 of the past 12 months, earning it three top-performance rankings. Of course, the company can't count on its customers to fill its retail ranks. That's why Select Comfort's regional and area managers scope out employees at other high-end retail establishments such as electronics and furniture stores. "You need to view people in the field," says Brasfield.

Julie Secora, a retail human-resources manager, interviewed Johanna Ross, now manager of the Palm Desert, Calif., store, after observing her at the jewelry counter of a large department store. "She was pretty dynamic and very upbeat," says Secora. Seeing her candidate in action, she says, gave her the confidence to make a quick decision. That strategy has paid off. According to Karen Jones, vice-president of human resources, retail staff turnover is just 35% a year, compared with the national average of more than three times that. The effort offers another advantage as well: by attracting employees from a variety of different industries, the company benefits from the diverse skills and types of experience that they bring to the job, de Naray notes.

Typically, employees receive a bonus of $100 to $500 for each referral who is hired and stays with Select Comfort for three months; the ante is upped when the company's needs are urgent. Mary Malchow, retail operations coordinator, has earned $750 in referral bonuses for employees she recruited during the past two years. "Before I came here, I worked in a telephone call center, so I had a large pool of people to recruit," she says. From the company's perspective, referrals like Malchow's reduce the risk of a bad hire, since employees generally think carefully before recommending a friend or a former coworker; no one wants to be associated with a poor performer.

Identifying Top Performers
Traits to hire by

Select Comfort not only keeps track of its best-performing employees but also attempts to isolate which characteristics make them productive. The company uses that information as a guide in its hiring. "We do focus groups where we talk to our top performers about what makes them successful," says Sara Evans, human-resources staffing coordinator. Those employees are also asked to take a standard personality-profiling test, which requires them to identify behaviors that are most and least like them (for example, gentle/kind, humble/reserved, and so on). Computerized scoring generates a 20-page personality profile, information that is used to develop interview questions for prospective employees. A top performer might also be asked to help develop questions for a series of multidisciplinary interviews with job candidates. The glitch: "The profile you were looking for two years ago isn't the same as it is today," says de Naray. So the company updates the profiles (the top performers might be different employees) every year.

"Our interviewing process is intense," says de Naray. "We spend an enormous amount of time probing who you are as an individual." Prospective employees may be asked how they deal with frustration, to describe a milestone in their careers, or how they organize tasks. "They wanted to make sure we had a good match around principles and values," recalls Rob Hawthorne, the newly hired CEO. "Then they needed to find out if I had the skills to run the company."

Defining Jobs
Incorporating a training function

At Select Comfort all new employees at the home office go through a two-day orientation at the University of Select Comfort, an internal training facility that also offers ongoing skills courses. New hires at the company's retail stores are trained by their area managers but also complete a video training program on Select Comfort's specific selling method, called Desire Fulfillment Selling (DFS).

"We get an exam that comes to us every quarter," says Karen McFarland. "Or sometimes we might get a surprise visit from corporate headquarters and be given a test." A monthly video called Talking Select keeps all employees abreast of new production techniques, plans for expansion, the results of market research, or any number of other companywide issues.

The company also relies heavily on its employees to help ease the transition for new hires. When Gloria Inabinet and her colleagues in South Carolina started their new jobs, seven master sewers were flown in from the company's Minneapolis manufacturing plant to help train the newcomers. "They didn't just train me, but they taught me how to be a trainer, too," says Inabinet, who was elected by the master sewers and her supervisor as one of four people on her shift qualified to train others. In Minneapolis, several departments use the buddy system to integrate new employees. "We take new representatives and pair them up with more experienced employees," says Amanda Birnstengel, a customer-service supervisor. Employees who volunteer to be buddies earn points toward pay increases.

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3  NEXT 

Read more:

Donna Fenn

Inc. contributing editor Donna Fenn is the author of Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit From Their Success (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Both this blog and the book examine the ways in which GenY is changing the entrepreneurial landscape with new approaches to starting, growing, and managing their companies. Learn more at http://www.upstartsrock.com/.

Sign-up for our Leadership and Managing Newsletter

Email Address: