A better hire

Each year Janet Peele faces the same challenge: hiring good employees who won’t quit so she can make it through the season without needing to replace them.

Peele is the owner of Aberdeen Florist & Garden Center, a greenhouse and retail garden center in Aberdeen, N.C. She typically hires about nine employees each season, and of those original hires, maybe one or two are normally still around at the end of the season.

Hiring takes a lot of time and energy, and retraining in the middle of the season takes away from more important tasks in her greenhouse and on the retail side, so she took a more conservative approach for hiring this year.

“I was a little more thorough in trying to check people out,” Peele says.

As a result, she had a much lower turnover rate this season as compared to past years.

Here are some of the factors that helped her be successful when deciding whether or not to bring someone on.

Communication: Peele’s business is small and she needs people who are versatile. The center grows 80 percent of what it sells, so she has the unique challenge of hiring people who can work both in the greenhouse and on the retail side, so an ability to communicate effectively and clearly is a key factor she looks for.

“We’re so small that everybody who works here has to be able to communicate with customers,” she says. “We’re not big enough to have a growing division and a retail sales division. If they can’t communicate, I can’t do it.”

Make sure they can fill out the application fully and correctly and that they can answer your questions cleverly and coherently in the interview process.

Heat and dirt tolerance: People are really quick to say they can do fine in the heat, but reality is another story, so Peele was more diligent in digging to find out if they could stand the southern heat.

“I ask them what experience they’ve had working outside — if they’ve worked in landscaping before or they’ve done an apprenticeship in a horticulture program at school,” she says. “Just mainly try to determine what they’ve done before. If someone has been in an air-conditioned office for five or six years, they’re probably not going to make it.”

Also, if an applicant comes in with an expensive manicure, she is skeptical of their ability to do the job well.

“I need someone who doesn’t mind if they get their feet wet and their fingernails messed up,” she says.

While appearances can often be deceiving, and yes, we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, sometimes those first impressions can be telling, so don’t overlook indications that may communicate an inability to get dirty and withstand heat on the job.

Motives: People often fantasize certain professions, but sometimes their ideas don’t match up with reality, so Peele digs to discover what their motives are for applying for the job.

She says she often gets applicants who simply think it would be fun, and that’s not enough motivation for them to stay around all season. She also gets women who talk about how they don’t need to work because their husbands make enough money. Or they talk about how when school lets out, they need more time off because they want to take their kids to the beach.

“I need somebody who needs a job and has a good work ethic,” she says.

Work ethic: Peele can’t tell you how many times she’s hired someone and when they started, they’ll suddenly not be able to work on certain days.

“The first time I hand them a schedule, they say, ‘I can’t work on Fridays because that’s the day I take my grandmother to the grocery store,’” she says.

She tells them they have to work on Fridays and to take their relative either after work or on a different day.

“They say, ‘Oh, no, I’ve been doing this for years,’” she says. “How do you deal with that? The other thing is, ‘I can only make 19 hours a week because if I make more, I’ll lose my unemployment.”

To avoid these situations, be sure to ask people in the interview process how many hours they’re looking to work and what schedule restrictions they have. Knowing upfront can keep you from hiring someone you have to let go later, and if they don’t bring it up when you ask, and they put up a fuss when you hand them a schedule, it’s easier to call them out that they didn’t share that restriction when asked in the interview.

Money management: You never know how someone handles their personal finances, but Peele says with some people it can be obvious and not to overlook those signs when they seem desperate.

She says she’s had people come in begging for a job and talking about how their power was going to be turned off that night if they didn’t pay it.

“You look at them, and they’re driving a less-than-one-year-old car, and they have frosted hair, big dangly earrings, lots of tattoos and an expensive manicure,” she says. “No, I don’t think so. That’s not where you should have been spending your money.”

Professionalism: She says that tight clothes and tattoos are fine in a casual setting, but in a work place, they don’t belong, so she wants people who can demonstrate professionalism by dressing appropriately, and that starts when they even come in for an application and carries through the interview process.

Peele once had a woman come in to inquire about a job, and she had on incredibly tight and short shorts that looked to be too small for her, and she was also covered in tattoos.

“I wants to get a job here,” she slightly demanded to Peele, who told her to ask the secretary for an application.

“Well, when can I start,” she presumed.

Peele thought, “’You’re not going to start until you change your clothes.’”

“They just don’t know,” she says. “Some of the filters are just obvious.”

Team player: Another part of having a good work ethic is being a team player, and sometimes that can be hard to read, but Peele has learned what to look for.

“Find people who don’t walk in with too many of their own opinions,” she says. “It’s easier to train one who’s open-minded and willing to learn. It’s easier to train one who doesn’t have a preconceived idea of what they want to do for you.”

She says another factor to look for is people’s work background.

“People who have been successful in a family restaurant or a family farm do well here,” she says.

There aren’t as many people coming out of backgrounds like that now compared to 20 years ago, but if you can find someone with that experience, they’ll likely be a good hire.

“Restaurant people have a sense of urgency, and farm people have a sense of work until the job is done, and it doesn’t matter if it’s dark, and it doesn’t matter if it’s pouring rain — if it’s got to be done, it’s got to be done today.”

For more: Aberdeen Florist & Garden Center, (910) 944-7826 or www.aberdeenflorist.com