Hire the Smile, Teach the Skill

The hiring philosophy at Nordstrom helps to explain the success of the chain. Nordstrom does not place emphasis on experience in retail. It feels that anyone can be taught this. It believes that it is more difficult to learn the right attitude. So, it has adopted the adage “Hire the smile, teach the skill.” In other words, hire those with the right people skills and attitude and teach them how to do their jobs, as opposed to following the methods of most companies.

The overwhelming majority of companies emphasize experience in their hiring processes. They put much, perhaps too much, emphasis on knowledge of the job, assuming that this will cost less money in the long term. After all, less training has to mean less expense, doesn’t it? What they miss is the fact that emphasis on skill, rather than attitude, can result in hiring mistakes and even greater turnover. Companies are hiring people with such poor attitudes that, in spite of their on-the-job experience, their service suffers. Their indifferent or poor service leads to unhappy customers, and that surely will have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Nordstrom is looking for people who are already nice and already motivated, because the company provides little in the way of a formalized training program. The company is not necessarily looking for people with previous retail experience, because those people have already learned to say, “No” to the customer. Nordstrom doesn’t want them to say, “No”—Nordstrom wants them to say, “Yes.” The company’s preference is to hire a nice person and teach her how to sell, rather than hire a saleswoman and teach her how to be nice.

Bruce Nordstrom was once asked who really trains the salespeople. His answer was: “Their parents.”