When you look for a product on the market, you want it to come with specific capabilities and functions to meet your needs as a consumer. The same is true for retail recruiters who are on a journey to discover retail employee skills.
What soft skills and technical capabilities do recruiters want when they are onboarding retail candidates? Let’s find out!
1. Exceptional Communication Skills
Instituting recruitment in retail industry endeavors includes finding candidates with exceptional communication skills. Employees must clearly and effectively communicate with customers about an array of topics.
- Details of how to score a specific store sale.
- Available payment methods at the register.
- Limits on how many of a product can be purchased at a sale price.
- Product availability and other stock questions.
Communication spans across skills for retail jobs beyond interacting with customers. Retail employees must also interact with store leaders and managers to communicate what’s happening on the sales floor and if any issues need to be addressed by upper management to maintain operational efficiency.
Just like recruiters want employees with strong communication skills, the candidate experience should be optimized for transparent and timely communications, too. This means keeping candidates informed about the next steps in the hiring process as soon as they can. For example, when a hiring manager is ready for an interview, an automated message should be disseminated to qualified candidates to enable self-scheduling.
2. Customer Service Expertise
Retail positions are customer-centric, which means one of the most important retail employee skills is to have exceptional customer service expertise. HubSpot Research states that 93% of customers are willing to return to establishments if their employees provide well-rounded customer service.
Retail professionals must be ready to handle customer inquiries and resolve any complaints to ensure client satisfaction and a positive shopping experience. Maintaining patience, practicing empathy, and the ability to be calm under pressure are all quality hallmarks of a customer service professional.
3. Sales and Product Knowledge
A proficient retail professional knows the ins and outs of the products they are selling. This is one of the most important skills needed in retail. Discussing product features with customers, suggesting complimentary items, and answering technical questions are all involved in having quality sales and product knowledge to succeed in a customer service position.
Any retail professional should be aware of the sales promotions for the week and what products go the best when bundled together to build their upselling skills. For instance, if a customer buys peanut butter in a grocery store, the cashier can mention a jelly sale or a bread promotion happening that week.
This upselling tactic is great to have because it not only garners more sales for the store but also enhances the customer experience. Especially when visiting a grocery store, the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University reported that 92% of customers usually forget something while shopping.
4. Adaptability and Problem-Solving
Honing retail job skills in these unpredictable environments are crucial to maintain adaptability and implement quality problem-solving skills. Candidates who can think on their feet when unexpected situations arise position themselves as valuable assets for the company.
For example, a customer could visit the store looking for a specific product, but it could be out of stock. In this case, retail workers should be ready to suggest other items that could fulfill the same need as the out-of-stock item. If the customer is brand loyal to what’s out of stock, the grocery store can issue a rain check, give the client a call, or send an email when the product is back in stock.
5. Teamwork and Collaboration
Working in a retail environment requires constant teamwork and collaboration. A cooperative mindset and the ability to function well in a team environment are vital retail employee skills to be successful in this industry.
A B2B Review study showcased that quality team collaboration can boost sales for a company by 19% to 27% while enhancing customer engagement by about 7%. These statistics underline the importance of having a strong, unified team to keep operational efficiency high in the retail workplace and properly serve customers during business hours.
