“People come to work for Nordstrom’s for four reasons. First is the opportunity for growth. Second, freedom. There are almost no barriers to doing your job. Third, feeling that you are part of something meaningful. Selling clothes is not what we do. It is filling people’s needs and making them feel better emotionally. Fourth, feeling valued. The more people are valued, the more connected they become. It perpetuates itself.”
From the book
“The Nordstrom way to customer service”
Now that the group had developed a template for what they want in their manager and decided on the compensation, it was time to go looking.
They want to stay local if possible. A person who already knows the territory, the lay of the land, has roots in the neighborhood, and is comfortable with the local flavor will be ahead of the game from the get-go. If that was not possible, they would expand to a wider region and then nationally for their choice.
The group put the word out to all professional employment agencies within a two hundred mile radius and placed small advertisements in the regional garden magazines. Additionally, the group contacted the major national and regional garden store consultants to put them on the look out for potential managers. They stayed away from any massed circulated want ads fearing to many unqualified applicants that would have to be waded through.
But, the most important task, a task that they had been working on for the past several months was to move through selected categories of local independently owned and operated retail businesses in the Tulsa market observing and scouting potential sales employees and floor managers. The categories for observation were businesses that required employees to handle a number of complicated skills at once, stores that moved merchandise quickly and efficiently, and stores that had a short window of opportunity to sell through products. The categories were garden stores and other plant and plant care stores, cosmetic and apparel stores, fresh fruit and produce stores, and medium sized high volume hardware stores.
From the scouting, the group had narrowed their search to forty candidates. Now it was time to put these people to some tests. It was agreed that Sarah Banks would stay away from this second phase of scouting and face interview the candidates. The others would be anonymous in order to pose as customers in the stores.
The group used a series of “set-ups” for the candidates. They would approach them as customers and put the candidate in some sort of awkward position demanding an immediate answer to some problem, complaint or inquiry about the products being sold. They were to observe the outcome and score the candidate on his or her performance.
Sarah would contact the twenty highest scoring scouted candidates and interview them personally. She outlined the job requirements and the potential compensation for the manager position and posed a series of questions to them then narrowing the selection to ten potential managers. On the second interview, a psychologist was hired to administer a written and oral personality profile examination to these ten.
Five candidates were retained for the final interview that would be conducted in person with all four of the group. The candidates were asked to give an oral presentation regarding their life, their work, their success and failures and their dreams for the future. At the completion of these interviews, the group decided on their choice for their first manager of green garden gates.
Please meet Dana Scofield…….
A tall, athletic, thirty five year old young woman with an engaging smile and an electric charming personality. Dana was a Nebraska farm girl, a cross country runner for her small town high school and a young actress in the little town summer theater group. Dana is the middle of four children. Her father and mother graduated from the University of Nebraska then moved back to the family farm to raise four children. After graduation, Dana spent two years at the University of Nebraska Drama School and later received a certification of excellence from the Culinary Institute in New York City.
Dana is a single mom with a young nine year old son, Nathan. They live, at present in a furnished apartment in Tulsa. On weekends and evenings they both can be found on the walking and jogging paths along the Arkansas River in Tulsa. On holidays, she is with her brothers and sisters laughing, preparing food, helping her mom harvest the garden and with her dad getting her hands dirty, full of grease, repairing the farm machinery at the Nebraska home place.
Dana started her working career as a management trainee at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas. She was quickly positioned and became a top sales person in the shoe salon at the main store. Three years later, she resigned her position and moved to Tulsa so her son Nathan could be near his father who lived now in Oklahoma. She was quickly recruited and hired as an assistant manager of the Tulsa branch of Sooner Soles, the largest independent retail shoe stores in Oklahoma. Because of her work with Neiman Marcus, She was chosen to be part of a team that would re-invent the business from the manufacture and sales of work boots to a full line sports and casual footwear boutique. She gained experience in buying, marketing, customer relationship plans, and design. Sara has been the manager of the flourishing Tulsa branch of Sooner Soles for the past four years.
Please meet Dana Scofield, the manager of green garden gates of Tulsa. She joined the four at the table ready now to build the store.
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