One of the easiest ways to increase the overall value of your independent pawn business is to recruit and hire the right candidates. Three things you can do to ensure that you’re putting the right people in place are: develop service-focused job descriptions, analyze applications and resumes properly, and conduct meaningful job interviews.
1. Develop service-focused job descriptions.
If you want to hire quality personnel to help you manage and run your pawn shop’s daily operations, the first thing you need to do is create accurate job descriptions.
When it comes to job descriptions, most pawn shop owners list the duties that a pawn shop employee will need to be able to perform, but neglect to include—much less focus on—the fact that they need people who have excellent interpersonal and verbal communication skills. If you’re a pawn shop owner, neglecting to make clear that you are seeking candidates with outgoing personalities that have a sincere desire to interact with customers is a big mistake. Customers may come into your shop out of necessity or curiosity, but they’ll keep coming back if the people you have on staff make them feel that your pawn shop isn’t just another pawn shop—but their pawn shop.
While you should include the duties that aren’t customer service-oriented in your job descriptions, whether those duties are to manage other employees, examine, product knowledge activity, price, and display merchandise appropriately, take inventory, or reconcile receipts, etc., the most important things you can include in your job descriptions are always going to be the things that have to do with service. It’s relatively easy to teach someone how to use a cash register or POS system. It’s much harder to teach someone to smile, be warm, greet customers, and create a welcoming environment. A service-focused job description can help you attract people to whom those things come naturally.
2. Analyze applications and resumes properly.
Putting forth an accurate job description is your first opportunity to weed out people who don’t have the personality and character traits you desire in an employee. How you respond to the applications and resumes that come in is your second opportunity to find the optimal person for the job.
In addition to a candidate’s experience and skill set, you should look at the other things about their application or resume that matter to you. If you’re looking for a person with great written and verbal communication skills, you probably don’t want someone who submits an application that contains a large number of spelling errors, regardless of the amount of experience they appear to possess. If you’re looking for someone with an outgoing personality, you probably don’t want someone who submits sound bytes rather than meaningful phrases, or, better yet, complete sentences.
It can be tempting to review candidate applications and resumes and decide to interview someone based on the fact that they’ve already worked in two or more pawn shops, but sometimes, deciding to give a diamond in the rough a shot is the better choice. Before you decide who to interview, review your applications and resumes and look for both the skills and qualities that matter to you. You’ll save yourself time down the road. You’ll also better prepare yourself to conduct thorough interviews.
3. Conduct meaningful job interviews.
Don’t feel so pressured to fill positions quickly or be so swayed by the skills listed on a prospective employee’s resume that you neglect to take the time to conduct meaningful job interviews.
Often, the biggest mistake pawn shop owners make during interviews is asking questions that are too general. Rather than ask an applicant whether he or she believes it is important to be friendly on the job, ask questions like, “How do you make a customer feel welcome?” or “How do you make customers feel that you are their trusted financial advisor during a lending transaction?” or “What are some of the things you do to make a customer’s experience special or memorable?”
If you ask a candidate whether he or she believes it is important to be friendly, you will likely get the answer you want to hear, but it won’t really tell you much about the person’s demeanor or the way the he or she will operate once out on the floor. By asking how candidates how they would handle specific situations, you can uncover a lot more about how they will be likely to respond to specific situations, and also, get a better idea of just how much they really want the job.
Hiring pawn shop employees may not be rocket science, but developing service-focused job descriptions, taking the time to analyze applications and resumes properly, and conducting meaningful job interviews can certainly improve your chances of putting in place the employees that have the personality and character traits you value from the start. And do you know what putting in place the right people gets you? In addition to higher sales and loyal customers, it gets you lower employee turnover rates. Who doesn’t want that?
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