What founders should know about hiring retail leadership—and why retail has reason to be hopeful

A New (Retail) Hope

This week brought great news for all industries that rely on a critical mass of humans gathering in one place: a promising announcement regarding a vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech stated that their COVID-19 trial vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective. 

While this is great news for retail and for the world, there’s still a long road ahead as they ramp up production and distribution. That means COVID-19 is very much a factor this holiday season and with increased restrictions and partial shutdowns in some states, physical retail is headed for a less-than-stellar holiday. 

Despite all of this, we may still see shoppers in stores. According to a recent McKinsey poll, 43% of shoppers chose stores as one of their top three methods for browsing for holiday gifts this season.

For those customers that do end up shopping in-store this holiday, they’re not as concerned with fancy tech solutions as they are will simple safety measures such as masks and barriers.

I’ve been saying all along that no one knows what the future holds, but putting the appropriate safety measures in place will help increase the likelihood that shoppers will feel comfortable shopping in your store.

ICYMI

Everybody wants to go DTC, including many wholesale-only legacy brands. This week, I spoke with Modern Retail about dinnerware brand Jono Pandolfi’s move to break into the market.

Remote work has transformed the way the world does business and hiring is no exception. I discussed L’Oreal’s mass virtual hiring event that began with 48,000 applicants and ended with 151 recruitment discussions. 

Now, on to our main topic: finding a retail job in a global pandemic.

What founders and recruiters should know about sourcing for retail leadership

For many months, I’ve been hearing from my talented retail friends and colleagues about their experiences looking for work in this climate. Most of what they report is disheartening: recruiters ghosting them mid-process, applying multiple times for a role that’s been taken down and reposted without any communication, way too low offers—you get the gist. 

On the whole, the retail frontline workforce is comprised of some of the most intelligent, agile and dedicated humans I’ve ever encountered, which made me want to tell their stories. Here, you will find an edited interview—along with some personal commentary—with one such retail leader, Bari Grossman. 

On Experience

Bari’s story is not unusual as retail stories go. She intended to work in PR and landed a retail position as she was making the transition from college to career. She said she “briefly left retail to take a job in PR immediately was like, okay, this is not it” and went back to her first love—retail.

Over the last decade, Bari has worked for legacy and startup brands operating existing high-profile stores, opening new stores in new markets and designing scalable practices for new retail concepts. 

On Agility

I bring up Bari’s background not only so you can see how impressive she is, but to bring to light the fact that her trajectory is not unique. Retail leaders are of the “jack of all trades” ilk. Let’s pick things up there.

Rebekah: What do you think is the most common misconception hiring managers and recruiters have when considering a candidate like you?

Bari: I think lack of awareness about the store manager role and how well-rounded store managers are as candidates. [Most] people see the soft skills, they know the soft skills and what goes on on the sales floor, but we are also excel masters. We know our way around the budget. We're managing all of the financials for the store, all of the facilities; there's just so much that goes into those roles that we're such well-rounded candidates. 

And we're great at handling things on the fly. I truly think like you can put a store manager into so many roles in an organization and they'll succeed because that's the kind of people we are. We've always had to be agile, but getting a hiring manager to see beyond just what you're doing on the sales floor, to see the bigger picture, is a little bit of a challenge. 

Rebekah: You're absolutely right. It's that like that jack-of-all-trades saying.

Bari: It’s not only that you have to learn your systems constantly, but you have to use these systems with a smile on your face in front of a person. Without letting any challenges or frustrations show.

The fact that we can smile and make small talk while we're navigating between four or five or six apps at a time and make it normal. That's a huge skill.

This agility makes retail leaders great crossover candidates for digital customer-facing roles such as leading a CX team as well. Yet, Bari said that recruiters often don’t understand the transferable skills many retail leaders already possess.

So to all of those recruiters, hiring managers and founders out there, your next “right” hire—even for a non-retail role—just might be a retail leader.

Rebekah is the founder of Kondrat Retail, a consultancy that builds exceptional retail experiences and scalable practices for the next era of consumer brands. Learn more here.