Everything Retailers Need to Know About Hiring with Thad Price

Crystal Vilkaitis: In today’s episode, I’m talking to Thad Price with Ready, Set, Hire. And this episode is for you if you want help in the hiring process. If you want to streamline your efforts, if you want to find great talent, if you’ve been ghosted in the past or want to avoid some of the ghosting. If you want to save costs on hiring or if you want to write a great job description to attract the perfect people for the position you’re hiring for, then this is a great episode for you.

Thad has a lot of experience in hiring. I’ll share a little bit about him in a second, but I found this conversation to be incredibly helpful, especially because I hear from a lot of our retailers that you know, it’s hard to find good people. And I see this when I’m out in my local neighborhoods. It seems like there’s not a lot of workers, so things are taking a lot longer and it’s just hard to find some of those great people.

Plus, Thad and I are talking about if you see a sudden spike in turnover, what some of the first things you should be doing there too. So great episode. Here’s a little bit more about my guest.

Thad Price is the CEO of Austin based Ready, Set, Hire and Talroo. Ready, Set, Hire is a new product for small to medium sized businesses, franchises, recruiters seeking to hire frontline and essential workers. It’s powered by Talroo, the multi award winning talent matching platform for enterprises designed for sourcing essential and hourly workers. Thad has more than 20 years of experience in the online recruitment and job search vertical, is a recognized thought leader in HR, TA space, and he genuinely believes that there is no industry that plays a more integral role in the economy.

Thad uses his cross functional experiences to turn client feedback into innovative products that continue Talroo’s mission of improving lives, one job seeker, and one employer at a time prior to joining Talroo, he was a VP of business development at Job.com. Connect with him on LinkedIn and check out ready, set higher at readysethire.com. Let’s dive in.

Welcome to Rooted in Retail. I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. Here we have engaging and informative conversations with successful indie retailers and industry experts. Together, we learn, connect, and grow. All right, here’s today’s episode.

Thad, welcome to Rooted in Retail. I am thrilled you’re here.

Thad Price: Crystal, great to be here. Thank you so much for the invite. I’m thrilled as well.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah, we’re going to have such a needed conversation on this show today because we’re gonna be talking about hiring. And it is a topic our retailers need help, guidance, insight, advice. Like everything that you could give because it’s just such a hard, kind of feels like a hard thing out there, finding good quality people and retaining them.

Introducing Thad Price

Crystal Vilkaitis: So we haven’t really talked about this much on the show. I can’t wait to dive in, but before we do, will you tell us a little bit about you and your experience?

Thad Price: Yeah, absolutely. So hi, I’m Thad. Nice to be here again. Excited to share some ideas and some best practices with you all. I’ve been in the recruitment and job search industry for almost 20 years, my entire career, and it’s exciting to be here. We have a special place in our heart for small businesses here at Talroo.

And we’re launching a new product, Ready, Set, Hire, which is to help small businesses like you all compete. And ensure you’re able to attract the talent you need to grow your business and take your business to the next level.

5 common challenges in hiring for small to medium-sized businesses and how to overcome them

Crystal Vilkaitis: That’s so awesome, so needed. I’m so excited for this to launch and for us to learn more, Thad. Now you have five common hurdles that you’ve identified that small businesses, small to medium sized businesses, struggle with when it comes to hiring. Will you break down what those five things are and how they can overcome them?

The crucial role of your job description in the hiring process

Thad Price: Yeah, so the first thing I would say with small businesses is the all powerful job description. If you think of a job description, the job description is actually copy. It’s a way you can attract talent to your business and to apply for your job. And so the job description is very important. It’s marketing copy.

It’s a way that you can first connect with the client. You can first connect with candidates and ensure that they’re a fit for your job. The second is transparency. So in this interesting world that we live in today, transparency is so important at every level. And the more transparent you are in the job and the transparency that you provide when you’re actually advertising a job, pay, these types of benefits, very important.

It’s a way that job seekers can feel that they’re aligned and their expectations are being set of what’s in it for them. And ultimately that’s what it is, right? You’re essentially providing an opportunity for someone to come be a part of your business. And that’s important for people. And one of the things I like to say in recruiting is: in recruiting, you’re in the life changing business.

The reason why indie retailers should see recruiting as changing lives

Thad Price: If you aren’t thinking of it as being part of the life changing business, or in the life changing business, you’re probably not going to be as effective as you could be otherwise in recruiting. Because when you recruit a great employee and you bring a great employee to your business, it can be life changing for you too.

It should be life changing to you. You’re growing a business. You’re saying I’m ready to hire someone. That means hopefully you should have less stress. Now it doesn’t always happen immediately, right? You have to train someone up. You have to ensure that you’re course correcting any mistakes, but it should be life changing for you as well.

Why speed to response is underestimated when it comes to hiring

Thad Price: Job description, all powerful. Transparency is very important. We think about being in the life changing business, all these are important. Now, when we think about tactically hiring, the next is speed. If you think of sales and you think of how we react to people that are looking to buy a product, maybe at your store, speed is so important in everything in sales.

We tend to forget in hiring and recruiting how speed is so important, especially in a world where applicants are in high demand. Especially when you are having problems, you know, finding people. That becomes very important. So speed to response is underestimated when it comes to hiring.

The benefits of embracing AI and automation in a hiring process

Thad Price: And the last piece that I would say, last five, and I could go to 10, but my top five. My top five, the last would be just the importance of AI and automation in a hiring process and really embracing that as your friend, because you can’t do everything. You are the chief everything officer. You’re doing everything.

You’re focusing your energy into your business and you need to leverage AI and automation as much as possible to take the guesswork out of processes. And of course, the process that we focus on is HR and recruiting, but there are a lot of other processes in your business. I’m sure that you would love to take the guesswork out of, but in our world, embrace AI. Think of what your process, your hiring process as assisted AI, knowing that you’re in the driver’s seat and AI is really the co pilot in providing you great advice to make decisions or to move your business forward and to take the next step.

So those are the five simple ones I would break down. Like I said, I can probably go to 10, but that’ll get you started and that’ll put you on the right path in recruiting.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Totally. And I love the I mean, being transparent and just laying it out there and like you said to being in the life changing business. I feel like that changes the whole feel of hiring and when you are really trying to find that right candidate and what makes sense for you and for them. And so I love that too.

How can indepedent retailers access the same AI hiring tools used by big corporations, but with a small business budget?

Crystal Vilkaitis: I also am a big fan of AI, and we talk about AI a lot on the show. So let’s go a little deeper there in preparation for this interview. You shared the only 11 percent of small businesses are using generative AI tools, but on average, more than 57 percent are interested in using AI tools. So how can listeners gain access to the exact same AI hiring tools that large enterprises and companies are using, but on that small business budget.

Thad Price: Absolutely. So shameless plug here, our product Ready, Set, Hire provides a lot of value for small businesses and leverages generative AI to help take the guesswork out of recruiting the out of the recruiting process. And I’ll give you a great example of that. The first is when you think about hiring as a chief everything officer, let’s say you’re a new business owner.

Let’s say you haven’t had a lot of experience in talent acquisition. There is an art and science to attracting great talent. That is what we refer to in the industry as talent acquisition, acquiring talent. And so if you think of the process that a lot of talent acquisition professionals have perfected over the years, it’s not something that you can just acquire in, listening to a YouTube video or one of these other, one of these other outlets, it’s something that you need to practice.

And one of the great ways that I said earlier is the all powerful job description. Job description, it’s copy, right? It’s attracting a candidate to get them to apply for your job.

So when we built Ready, Set, Hire, what we wanted to do was to take a lot of the best practices in recruiting and create a really easy to use frictionless experience for small businesses to leverage to start recruiting. And when you think of some of the existing platforms in this industry today, the space today, they’re in some cases hard to use and not as friendly as you would think.

And so we really wanted to take a fresh take on what it takes to actually, what’s needed to recruit and attract candidates. So job descriptions is an easy way to think about, how we can theme a job, how we can create a job based on best practices. The 2nd thing that I would say that we underestimate is the power of just interview process, right?

If you think of interviewing a candidate, there are very pointed and scripted questions that you should ask in order to get to the root if you know this candidate’s going to be successful in the position. And so in our, in the Ready, Set, Hire platform, you can actually activate a hiring guide, an interview guide that will give you question hits to ask through the hiring process to be more successful at hiring and ensuring you’re getting the right assessment.

When you found a candidate that you’re looking to have a conversation with. So that’s just two simple examples of how we’re leveraging generative AI to help again, take the guesswork out of hiring and to create a better experience for small businesses that aren’t talent acquisition leaders.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Exactly. What I love about this because we at Crystal Media, we’re pretty focused in the social media, digital marketing world. And so a lot of our independent retailers try to hire help for social, digital marketing, their website management, building a website, keeping inventory, marketing it. But they haven’t done those jobs themselves.

And so it’s very challenging to know what to ask in the interview to know. like I need to make sure that you know what you’re doing. Like I need help in understanding those questions. And I think this is so great that your platform has this built in that I’m assuming, if they’re feeding the information, like who they’re hiring for and what the job is.

Your platform can help them write the job description to really target the right person. And then give them based off of what they’re hiring for. Give them some of those questions to ask during that interview process to really make it a great interview. Awesome.

Thad Price: Absolutely. And then the other piece of this, not that this is generative AI, but it’s an automation feature that our customers love is, if you think about the ping pong that happens with booking an interview or booking like a slot for something. What happens is when a job seeker, so you know, you create your job, you post your job, you can use our templates.

You can get started. We’ll give you suggestions on screening questions that you should ask in the process. When the job seeker interacts with the job that you’ve built on Ready, Set, Hire, there’s a chatbot. There’s a chatbot experience that happens. So when the job seeker answers questions we can immediately get some insight into If that candidate is a fit.

And here’s the cool thing, if that candidate is a fit, and you have synced your calendar, the chatbot will actually surface available times directly on your calendar, so that you don’t have to ping pong back and forth to find the right time. And so that simple process is something that we all spend more hours out of our life that we should spend in finding time on a calendar. Right? And so if we can surface that in the apply process, imagine when a job seekers applying for a job to be able to say, Hey, I can chat with Crystal at 10 o’clock on Friday morning.

And that’s great for Crystal because in that case, we’re filling you full of interviews, which is what you want. You want your calendar full of interviews to ensure you’re making the right decision of who to hire. And it’s not about the all powerful resume.

It’s not about the candidate applying. It’s you want to talk to someone. That’s what we constantly hear from small businesses is: will these people show up? I want to just talk to someone that wants, that believes in what we’re doing, what’s important for us and wants to work. And we think that’s one of the fundamental opportunities that’s potentially missed in the industry is so much of that human element is so important. And really what technology should do is really provide the matchmaking and the scheduling and let humans do the decision making process on who you want part of your business.

Because again, especially with small businesses, it’s important. I’ve always worked for privately held, family businesses. And when you make a decision to hire someone, you’re bringing them into something special. And I think it’s important for us as a industry to realize that and to realize when someone makes a decision like that, especially with small businesses and family owned businesses that, you know, it is somewhat family oriented and team focused.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Absolutely. What I love about this too is, I feel like I’m saying I love this a lot, because I’m excited about it for our small businesses because it is giving them the tools that larger companies have. Or larger companies have assistants that are cycling through all the candidates and then they’re doing the back and forth with booking.

And as a small business and you’re doing so much. It’s very challenging, where often they’ll put off the hiring because it feels like I don’t have the time to hire, even though that’s exactly what you need, because you need that support. You’re never, I just feel like teamwork makes the dream work.

If you want to grow your business and if you, depending on what your goals are, if it’s more locations or just more time with your family, you need people to support you. So giving them these tools to make it as streamlined and easy to save them the time is so great. They need it. So thank you for doing that.

The impact of hiring great people and placing them in the right roles

Thad Price: Absolutely happy to do it. And I think that traditionally when we’ve advertised jobs as an industry, if you think about mentioned earlier, you work a lot in social and a lot of small businesses outsource that to other companies; online advertising and services of that nature. And what’s interesting about job advertising is it, even though it’s one of the largest advertising segments, you know, the rough estimate is the job advertising industry is about a $30 billion industry, which is worldwide. Which is huge from an advertising perspective. And of course, I’m partial because I think of it like, you know, it is the biggest contributor to the economy.

If you think of advertising, great people grow great companies. The people you recruit, build your product, the people that you recruit, take care of your customers. To me, it’s even more powerful than anything in consumer marketing. When you think of the power that recruiting great people can provide and ensuring that the right person is in the right job in the right company, how that can move an economy forward. But where I’m going with this is that our thesis with our current company, Talroo, which was the parent of Ready, Set, Hire, was that it’s kind of silly to just post a job on a job site. You should go where the audiences are.

And if you think of how media has moved, right? Media has moved to is someone in market for something, right? Is this person in market to buy a product? And the way we think about that is the same with talent audiences. Where is this person in market for a cashier job?

Is this person in market for a store manager job? Is this person in market? And it shouldn’t necessarily matter where you advertise as long as you’re ensuring that there’s a good feedback loop and that you’re in market at the right audiences. And so if you think about the genesis of our company and you think about Talroo, we said, Hey, let’s figure out this audience thing.

And now with Ready, Set, Hire, we’re building this great mousetrap to ensure that we’re enforcing best practices on the recruiting side as well. So advertising, and then that process of what happens once you advertise and you have someone connected and you have someone matched, what’s the process that happens to ensure a great outcome for the employer and a great outcome for the job seeker?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Oh, that’s awesome. And so Talroo, is that kind of a platform where people who are seeking for jobs are going, and that’s how you’re connecting, it’s almost like matchmaking them to find those jobs. Okay, awesome.

Thad Price: Talroo’ s technology powers over a billion job searches a month, and our technology is integrated into many job sites that we power. And to think about it, we have this large swath of job seekers, but we really didn’t have a way for a small business to actually access that talent pool.

And so that’s the genesis of why we built Ready, Set, Hire is to provide a way where small businesses can actually access this very large talent pool that traditionally has been accessed by many of the enterprise companies.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Exactly. Again, making it more, they’re more competitive. They’re able to access those people and have their jobs be seen and then helping them recruit that talent more seamlessly, which is so good.

How to write the perfect job description for your open position while following new pay transparency laws

Crystal Vilkaitis: I want to go back to writing the job description. How do you write the perfect job description? For your open position while properly approaching new pay transparency laws, and I’m wondering if you can also share what those pay transparency laws are.

Thad Price: Absolutely. So I can’t share all the pay transparency laws because there’s a lot happening right now in many states. Colorado, of course, was one of the first to really focus on pay transparency. And there are others, of course, as well that are rolling out. But the idea is, pay transparency is important for people and people are expecting pay transparency.

As I said, Colorado was 1 of the 1st states is New York, California, and a few others following as well. So we’ll see those continue to roll out and provide a lot of transparency that’s been needed for the industry at some time, which can help people navigate, am I being paid fairly? Part of the process is really important, but also it also means if you’re not being transparent, you should be because you’re at a disadvantage compared to other businesses that are embracing it.

So that’s the first thing that I would say, going back to this idea of the job posting is, I like to think of job postings as a way that a company can put their first foot forward. Now, disclaimer, we haven’t built this into our platform yet, but it’s one of the things that I would do if I were a small business or business looking in a very small area of, you know, that may have a limited amount of talent supply that’s potentially in a neighborhood of like how to write a job description and that is study your competition. So I think we, when you think of sales and you think of what happens from your business standpoint, you probably have a sense of who your competitors are, whether they’re brick and mortar or whether they’re online retailers and you probably study how they connect the systems they use to connect, how they communicate all those things.

My advice to you would be study your local market as well and see if there are some interesting small businesses that you think you’re competing with for talent. And when you do that, there are a lot of things that you can do. You can go to Glassdoor or you can go to Indeed and you can read reviews on those companies that you’re competing with.

And what I would do is I would build like a battle card, you know, kind of like a competitive battle card. And through the competitive battle card, you would say, all right, company a. I’m reading in the reviews that they have this problem, you can kind of use the reviews as a way to think about how you could structure your conversation.

Because when you’re recruiting, what you have to think about is a job seeker is looking for something better than they have today.

Even if they were, if they’re in between jobs, if they’re unemployed, they’re still looking, everyone’s trying to find something better than they had previously. And so if you have this idea of your competitors and then you start looking at Glassdoor and Indeed and reading the reviews and you start thinking, what can I offer that’s different? Second, what can I celebrate I already offer that I may not have known as a competitive advantage, right? And then third, get an idea of pay. Because at the end of the day, pay is going to be very important to ensure that you’re attracting talent. And then the fourth I would say is don’t underestimate the competitive nature of gig marketplaces and how it may impact your business depending on the role.

And what I mean by that is too many times, even enterprise companies, too many times they don’t really see Uber, DoorDash, Instacart as competitors. And they are because if you think about the flexibility that those marketplaces afford you, and if you work in those marketplaces, you can, it can rival what you may get paid in other businesses.

And so never underestimate the power of the marketplaces. And so what you need to do is you need to spend time telling your story and show your passion through the interviewing process. And that’s a way that you can get people to lean in because anyone can go and log on or log in to one of the marketplaces and start driving and generating income. What you can’t do is your opportunity. Remember, we’re in the life changing business here. Your opportunity is bigger than a transactional relationship. That is I deliver something and I make 20 bucks or 30 bucks. You’re bringing them into your business, your passion, what you’ve built, and you need to show them that it’s more than the transactional nature of income.

And it’s more being part of something much larger. And bonus points, if you can actually share with them more of a career path where you can, what I share is where can I go and grow, right? Where can I go within your company and what can I grow into?

And that’s very important in the interviewing process as well, when you’re looking to essentially close, right? Close great talent and bring them to be a part of your business.

Crystal Vilkaitis: On the show, we talk a lot about how the consumer and the customer has so many choices. So you have to really stand out and capture that attention and humanize the content. And there’s so much. The employees have so many choices, and I think you’re bringing up such an excellent perspective of they have a lot of choices.

You are competing with the gig work. And I love the idea of looking at the reviews from competitors to find those holes. Or like you said, you might not even realize that you’re winning at something. Like you’re really great at doing this one thing that people are really hungry for, they’re searching for, and they want to connect with you.

And you’ve got that available to them. This is a cool way. It’s a different way of kind of thinking about that job description and both, because I think that we could just be like, I need all this stuff done. Here’s your tasks. Here’s your responsibilities. Now I post it, but we got to up our game.

If you’re really trying to find good quality talent that you want to retain, because that’s the hard part too. I think it really starts with finding the right person from the very beginning.

Thad Price: Absolutely. And it may take you longer to find the right person. That’s where the pain sets in, right? When you make a decision because you’re hiring because you need to fill a role in more of a reactive experience, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to, fill this role now And so you hire You’re reactive instead of being proactive and building your talent pool long term. I think one thing we have to think about as employers and as business leaders is we’re not always going to get it right.

And that’s okay if we learn from it. And that’s okay. If we recognize that early in the process where we can course correct. And I also think that we probably, as business leaders could do a better job of identifying if someone’s going to be a fit for a longer period of time than kind of the transactional emotional aspect of I am underwater. I have to fill this job now because that ends up not actually being a performant decision long term.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Exactly. That’s very true, and I like the encouragement of some of that grace and really knowing that this can take time. I once heard higher, slow fire fast. Do you agree with that?

Thad Price: I definitely agree with that.

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Crystal Vilkaitis: Are you posting to Stories every single day? You should be. In fact, Instagram announced that they want businesses to be posting twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon and twice in the evening to get that engagement and show up to the people that follow them. Now, before you freak out and you gasp and you say, what the heck, Crystal, are you serious?

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What can a business do if candidates disappear during the hiring process?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Can we talk about ghosting? Cause that is a huge thing that so many businesses are battling with. So what can a business do?

If people haven’t heard of this ghosting is when, you know, you’re talking to the job candidate and then all of a sudden they just, they’re either not showing up for the next round of interviews. They just, they’ve vanished or they get hired and they never show up for their first day. So any tips there?

Thad Price: A couple of thoughts on this. So if we think about the industry, as I said earlier, speed is everything. Kind of one of the five points I made earlier, speed is everything. I’m of the opinion that this is kind of the world striking back.

When we think of the processes by employers, and what I mean by that is for years we have been in more of a employer’s market. Where the employers have been in a lot of the control, a lot of the seat when we think of the hiring processes and what that basically means is that, I think an employer in many cases are thinking I’m going to hire this person and pay this person money.

They should be available whenever I want them to be available. They should do backflips, whatever, the employer’s in control. We’ve been an employer’s market. And think about what I said earlier, that speed is everything. For years, job seekers, there’s been a black hole where job seekers have applied to jobs.

And we probably have all applied to jobs that we haven’t heard back from ever. And we’re like, is it crickets, crickets. And so when I said, the job seeker strikes back, this is to me, one of those markets where it flips and it’s collectively, as a society the job seeker is like, hey, they don’t respond to me.

So I’m not going to respond to them. And so some of it is, I think, in that world that we’re in right now is that. And so first I would say, Hey, let’s just realize that as an industry, we haven’t been as proactive in our communication with job seekers either. And so I feel if we do a better job and enforce more process to be more proactive with job seekers, that can help increase your brand reputation.

It can also help. Especially for small businesses, set a level of standard of service, which is so important for small businesses. Like your applicants are your customers in many cases, or friends of your customers, or family members of your customers. Let’s first ensure that we’re thinking about speed and providing great customer service to our applicants.

Outside of that, when we think of ghosting, I feel that we set the tone of what’s expected in the apply process. Throughout the apply process and from an employer standpoint and a business standpoint, we should lead by example, and we should ensure that there’s constant communication. And so tools that we built in Ready Set Hire, like the interview scheduling.

Crystal Vilkaitis: hmm.

Thad Price: Are there going to be job seekers that just flake and probably don’t show up to those interviews?

Yes. That’s going to happen, but at least we’re creating a better job seeker experience and focusing on the level of service that we want to provide as a business. And we expect to provide as a business to job seekers. So, I think communication often is very important. I think speed is very important throughout the process.

Over communicate when you can and all these things will help improve ghosting. But I don’t see ghosting going away anytime soon, especially given the world that we’re in right now in this really job-seeker-driven-market versus, employer market that we’ve been in

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah,

Thad Price: prior years.

Crystal Vilkaitis: I think you’re right. I don’t think it’s going away and just having the tools to help minimize some of the ghosting and speed the conversation along. Make sure that it’s staying in flow and really going somewhere. I love flipping it on the other way. Like it takes two to tango here. If you’re not responding to people, you might get that in return.

I do love those businesses that say, “Hey, you’re not a right fit, but thanks for applying,” like some, or “thank you for applying. We received it’s going into the next step.” Like we have to have some sort of communication with people. And the more that you do that, the more credible of a company, like you said.

So those are really great tips. And it is what it is. Retailers, we’re all dealing with the ghosting, but don’t be a ghost yourself. Make sure you have good communication.

Thad Price: Absolutely. The other thing that I would mention for retailers that I think is important especially, whether it’s online or brick and mortar both are interesting use cases. Don’t underestimate the power of a hiring event as well. And you know, one of your secret weapons that you have in recruiting is your customer loyalty list. And your customer loyalty list is so important because again, as I said earlier, your customers are your applicants.

Your applicants are your customers, or friends of your customers, or family members of your customers. And so I think one of the great recruiting tools that you could probably leverage if you’re having problems recruiting is your customer loyalty list, and it’s easy to organize a in house hiring event , where you can invite your customers too.

You can use that your customer list as a way to advertise an in person hiring event and why a lot of businesses love in person hiring events. It’s because the people show up

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah.

Thad Price: And so you don’t waste a lot of your time. And so a lot of retailers and a lot of companies love hiring events because you can recruit in person and kind of save a lot of time as well.

Something to think about, in a way to leverage what you already have and could be helpful to your business.

Crystal Vilkaitis: For sure. I want to know if anybody’s done a hiring event, you can share with us in our Rooted in Retail Facebook group. I think this is a really great way to save some time because you can put people together. First of all, see who shows up. That’s a great starting point, right? Like actually having people there.

I heard from a retailer last year who did a hiring event and she was just saying it was so fun. It was really great way to connect. They got a great hire out of it. And I think, especially with retail, if you are, have a physical location, just pulling them in and having that like face to face time.

And that connection time is so critical and can speed up the process to your point. Speed up the process. Let’s get them in the door. Let’s meet them. Let’s try to make this happen. Love the idea of hiring events.

What should retailers analyze first if they see a sudden increase in staff turnover?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Now, before we go into our resilience round, I want to talk about turnover. If you see, if our retailers are seeing a sudden spike in staff turnover, what should they analyze first?

Thad Price: So first I would understand, I would probably understand why is it an area? Is it a team member? Because there’s something unique. So think about it. If you see a pattern in some cases, potentially it could be a shift leader. It could be another issue. So first look for patterns, pattern match what may be happening, especially if it’s certain segment.

For an example, you could be in a situation where maybe you aren’t necessarily where you need to be in your in your pay ranges in a certain function, and suddenly, like, why are my people leaving? It could just be pay driven but you should be constantly conducting market research to understand kind of where you are competitively, in that function.

And that’s something that a lot of companies and companies were doing every six months. Over the last couple of years, because pay was changing so rapidly. But generally, it’s something you can complete every year, but I would encourage given the environment, at least every 6 months.

That would be the 1st thing. The 2nd thing I was just have a conversation. We underestimate, again, the power of communication and one on ones and in many cases, because we’re the chief everything officer and we’re running all over the place and we’re trying to build a business and grow a business.

The importance of those one on ones to really understand what we need to start doing, stop doing, or keep doing. And asking the team members their opinions on certain components of the business.

very much. And that becomes really important in gaining that feedback throughout the process and ensuring that you’re able to retain your team and knowing that you’re listening to their thoughts and that becomes really important. So those are some insights and to think about how to really dive into that problem and really provide a different way to look at what may be happening.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah, I like it. And I think, hopefully our retailers aren’t battling with that too much, but obviously it’s part of running a business and people are leaving us. It’s very important for us to understand the whys. Thad, it made me curious. Does your platform or maybe it’s Um, if uh, yeah if, if you could use AI and based off of the job description, the requirements, the location, can you generate like what the average pay is for that role and pull that data in?

Thad Price: Yeah, we can. So it’s funny. When you actually create a job on the Ready, Set, Hire platform, we will give you pay suggestions on what in that area is essentially average. You can enter in what you would like to pay will give you suggestions and really give you an interesting view and snapshot of pay because it is very dynamic now and it is driven by the role.

So I think that’s something that is very important when you advertise a job, as I said earlier, with transparency and people making that decision, people know their worth it’s important that you embrace that. And you pay competitively.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Exactly. I’m so happy your platform has that because I got to tell you so many retailers ask me, what should I pay a social media person? And I’m like well, it just depends on where you live and what the experience is and what all are they going to be doing? I mean, there’s so many varied variables to it that it’s very hard for me.

I can give you ranges, but the fact that you have that built within those locations is beautiful. I love it, Thad.

Thad’s resilience round

Crystal Vilkaitis: Are you ready for the resilience round?

Thad Price: I will do my best. Let’s try it, let’s go for it. All right. I’m ready.

Best business book

Crystal Vilkaitis: Best business book?

Thad Price: The Customer Signs Your Paycheck.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Oh, have

Thad Price: a unique one. I had a mentor of mine first in my career who shared that with me. And it was just all about creating delightful customer experiences. And it really shaped how I think about customers in general and the importance of customers to business.

Best retail technology

Crystal Vilkaitis: Awesome, I can’t wait to check that one out. Best retail technology, like an app or software.

Thad Price: Shopify.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah, good one.

Thad Price: definitely. I love just the ease of use, and the way in which you can use the shop app and you find some really interesting retailers through it as well that you didn’t know existed.

How do you keep up with the ever changing retail landscape?

Crystal Vilkaitis: So true. That’s a great one. How do you keep up with the ever changing retail landscape? I know you’re not necessarily in retail, but how do you keep up?

Thad Price: I mean, it’s changed so much and if you think of e-commerce and you think of how we buy today. I like to think of it from a technical lens and really understand, what will delight a customer and allow them to be a lifetime customer. And when I think about that and I think about retail in general and what those moves are, I think that the fusion of customer service and brand and emotion are probably the three biggest components that I look to infuse that I look for technology to infuse.

Does that make sense? If can focus your energy around those three things in technology, you can be a lot of successful. So to answer your question specifically, I look at how people are buying and how people are interacting. And then I look at technology to say, are they in line with what the expectations are of the consumer? I think you can look around and see how people are interacting and probably create a thesis on where we think technology will go in the future.

What’s a hiring foundational best practice?

Crystal Vilkaitis: It’s so true. To help retailers be stronger, more rooted in success, what’s a hiring foundational best practice?

Thad Price: hiring foundational best practice, know your competition.

If Thad had to start his business all over again, what’s one thing he’d do differently?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Hmm. Good one. If you had to start your business all over again, what’s one thing you’d do differently?

Thad Price: What would I do differently? I would probably put more emphasis on brand.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Hmm.

Thad Price: brand, and we put a lot of emphasis, but you know, there’s a different calculus when you’re thinking about brand and how we focus on brand and how companies should focus on brand.

Crystal Vilkaitis: That’s smart. I love that you said that, especially for our retailers. I think sometimes we skip over that. So that’s a good one. What do you think

Thad Price: brand, and I will say brand isn’t a logo, right? Brands

Crystal Vilkaitis: Exactly.

Thad Price: what it means and how you feel. And a long term investment thesis around brand, not something that is short term investment oriented as a brand. I invest a dollar, I get two back different way to think about it.

What do you think the future of independent retail looks like?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Exactly. Yeah, good clarification. So much more than a logo. That’s for sure. do you think the future of independent retail looks like?

Thad Price: I think it’s fantastic. And the reason is because we are entering an age where a lot of what we can do will be automated

Crystal Vilkaitis: Mm hmm.

Thad Price: more than ever before. And I look at the successes in retail over the last few years. And there’s one thing that continues to shine and that is customer service.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Mm

Thad Price: And I think that retailers are at a great point to be able to provide, independent retailers, be able to provide a great service connected to the community.

And something that you can’t find it through a marketplace that makes it easy to buy. And I think that if we focus our energy as a industry on all the ways in which we can provide great service and great connection to a community that we can fill a void of course hire the right people.

And through that, I feel I’m very bullish, long-term, in retail, because I think that even with all of the experiences that have moved online, there’s still an opportunity to provide in those important aspects. And when you look at like a company like Shopify and what they’re doing you know, with a local retailer, and then you fuse that at a larger scale online with great service connection to a community, that’s to me where the magic happens.

Crystal Vilkaitis: It’s so true and brand. I mean, that’s very well said. Thad, how can people connect with you and learn more?

Thad Price: Yeah, thank you. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy to connect and share more advice and feel free to check us out. Readysethire. com. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate the invite, Crystal.

Crystal Vilkaitis: Yeah, I’m so glad to have you. This was such a great conversation. So thank you for sharing your wisdom and everyone. Remember that I’m rooting for your success. Have a great week ahead. Bye.

Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don’t forget to join the rise and shine newsletter, which is social media news. You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystal media, co. com slash rise to join and don’t miss the newest episode of Rooted in Retail, which drops every Sunday morning.