Ryan Cheyne, Head of Human Resources, gives an insight into some of the solutions implemented at Pets at Home to solve the difficulties of recruiting front-line employees for this specialist retailer.

 

Working at Pets at Home is more than just a job; front-line employees must combine a love of animals and a sound knowledge of pets with the desire to work in a fast-paced retail environment. How do Pets at Home strike this balance with their employees?  Ryan Cheyne, Head of Human Resources, explains that overcoming this challenge is all down to investing time in their innovative recruitment process.

 

What do you find is your biggest recruitment challenge?

The biggest challenge is getting people with the right personalities and interpersonal skills in our stores. As a specialist retailer we have an added challenge in that we need a certain knowledge level and commitment to our product.

Historically we have had problems where we've recruited people who absolutely love pets but don't associate that with the kind of hard retail work they have to do in store, or we've recruited hard-nosed retail bods who haven't got that affinity with pets.

It's a combination of three things. First is the fact that it is retail and we have to restock shelves in the way a supermarket would; we have to face up, we have to merchandise, we have to hand-manage the deliveries. Secondly they definitely need that affinity with the product and they need to be able to relate their experiences to our customers. This links into the third, which is to be able to speak with confidence and communicate clearly with our customers because it is a very high service environment.

We get a lot of people coming across from grocery but in grocery the service is quite supportive of the sign service where as our customers require expert advice. You can easily spend an hour selling a rabbit or talking through the set up of a fish tank, so you need a combination of those skills and our challenge is finding these people.

What have you done to overcome this challenge?

In stores we have what we call an audition process.  Rather than just an interview, a candidate will spend two or three hours with us, which will also include an interview, but they will also do exercises around product, pet and people. We actually ask them to do a bit of delivery work or if we haven't got a delivery, move a bit of stock around. We'll get them to work the stock because that's an important part of what they do.  We also ask them to handle the pets; you'd be amazed at how many people have issues with the pets!  People aren't aware of what goes on behind the scenes of a pet shop so we'll ask them to clean out a rabbit, or something similar, and then we ask them to interact with customers so that we are not just reliant on what they tell us at an interview, we actually witness it.

Through that we get other members of the team involved so the recruitment decision is made across a number of people. Depending on the size of the store and where it is, that could be two people or it could be three or four. Everyone who takes part in that audition process will then feed into the decision making process.  We will go through this process with candidates for positions from store colleagues who come to work for us on a Saturday right through to store management.

 

The other thing we did, two years ago now, was have a big hit on training. When we launched the audition process we trained every single manager and deputy in the business on recruitment generally. Now we build that in as part of the core training, so any manager joining us will attend our training on recruitment within their first year within the business.  Although it’s not rocket science it gives us the opportunity to sell the audition process in and it is key in terms of getting it right.

 

 

Do you find candidates ‘buy in’ to this process?

The audition process actually creates a point of difference for us. It’s not the traditional 15-20 minute interview if you are going for a Saturday job, it makes us stand out.  We are going for the X-Factor approach. We want people going, “Wow that's so good” and if they don't get the job they are upset because they have had such a good experience.  And of course, if they do get the job we can be confident we have made the right call. Our retention levels are one of our KPIs specifically to reduce the number of leavers within the first three months. We have seen a significant reduction in leavers within that 3 month period since we've introduced this process.

 

So if they turn you down - you also know it’s the right decision?

That's the whole point of it, if we're not right for them we'd rather know before we go through the training and the induction and getting them a uniform and everything so it works well from both parties’ perspective.

 

Is it straight forward retaining people once they are on board?

The recruitment part of it underpins the whole success of retaining people, I think we are pretty good now having bought into the investment in terms of the time and effort of it.  I think everybody has woken up to the fact that if you invest two or three hours up front, it can save you an awful lot of time going forward if you get the right person in the business.

 

Are there any other recruitment challenges you have?

The other factor, which is becoming less of an issue, but certainly two or three years ago was, is that we were retail’s best kept secret. A lot of people hadn't heard of the brand or, if perhaps they had, may never have been into one of our stores. They had a perception that that's not real retail, that's a pet shop and perhaps imagined us as kind of the traditional high street pet shop – you know brown coats and all!

That was really generated, I think, because we are quite a new company. We are only 16 years old and people may have seen us in the retail parks but if they are not a pet owner, if they are not a regular customer, they wouldn't have appreciated what's inside.  Only 50% of the population own pets so 50% of the retail population own pets and 50% of the population you might be targeting to work for you would never have stepped inside one of your stores.

 

How did you go about getting over this challenge?

Part of what we've had to do is to sell the message and get the brand out there. We do quite big graphic, eye-catching adverts. If you look in the retail press, there is not a lot of imaginative advertising going on, but we try and do something which is a bit more imaginative and eye-catching. It’s really to get the name out there and to get the people who may not have considered us before, applying to us as a business.

The other factor which seriously helps is that we are opening more than 20 stores a year. Obviously as we open more stores our brand recognition increases. I think the other thing we have been a bit more proactive about is shouting about what we do. Two or three years ago we rarely spoke to the press and now we do. These are factors that I'm not in control of but which are happening anyway and which help us. We all play our part in terms of building our brand; if we are building our brand with customers we are also building our brand as a potential employer.  

 

If you would like to discuss any retail recruitment challenges faced by your organisation or have suggestions for future TALKabout topics, please contact us.