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Louisville, KY—A familiar refrain among luxury jewelers is, “where can I find great people?” Doug Fleener, the former director of retail for Bose Corp. knows a thing or two about hiring good people for high-end retail. In a blog on Retail Customer Experience.com, Fleener—now president and managing partner of specialty retail consultancy Dynamic Experiences Group LLC—offers five tips to start improving your chances of hiring the right person the first time:

1. Look for someone with passion, who is interesting and whom you’d enjoy working with, rather than someone who has retail experience.

2. Interview as many people as possible. Fleener relates an anecdote of a candidate whose resume wasn’t well written but whose interview was excellent at proving he was driven and passionate with an outstanding work ethic. English was his second language—hence the poor writing—but he was that much more determined and worked that much harder to get the position.

3. Try a group interview. Use phone interviews to narrow down to the finalists, suggests Fleener, then invite all the finalists in together for a group interview and involve your current employees with the process. Use role-playing and sales/service scenarios to quickly show you who stands out (and how they work in a retail environment.)

4. Go big with your referral bonuses, he says. By offering $500, $750, and more for a successful referral, your employees will be on constant lookout for great new recruits!

5. Find people before you need them. Most of the best people aren’t looking for a job, writes Fleener, but when you meet someone who gives you outstanding service and/or a great vibe, keep in touch with them. Fleener suggests offering a gift card for a free gift in your store as a way of getting their attention without actually recruiting them at their place of work.

Read Fleener’s full article here.

Top image: uloop.com