The Three Things Your Hiring Process Isn't Testing For.

0:00Ron Thurston:I want you to think about the last time you or someone you know hired a frontline associate in retail. What did the job description say? Probably something about customer service, cash handling, maintaining store standards, availability on the weekends. But now I want you to think about what Gen Z actually needs from the person in that role when they walk into the store. They need a community host, a product expert who can have a real conversation. Someone with enough confidence and warmth to make a 22-year-old who came in feeling disconnected from the world be feeling like they belong somewhere.

0:37Ron Thurston:Those are not the same job, and the gap between them is costing more than you think. I'm Ron Thurston. This is Retail in America. Every episode, I'm going to give you three human truths about retail, about technology, and the people caught in between. So let's look into what's happening today. The last episode I talked about Gen Z and why this most digitally connected generation in history is choosing physical retail at a higher rate than any generation before them. 62 % of purchases by 18 to 24 year olds are happening in stores. 40 minute average dwell times in apparel. 42 % of mall visits primarily social in nature.

1:21They came for the experience. They came for the connection. And they came because the screen couldn't give them what they were looking for. So today I want to talk about the other side of that equation. Because it's not enough to just know that Gen Z is walking through your door. The question is, are the people you hired ready to meet them? And the honest answer for most retailers is no. Not because the people are wrong. Because the hiring strategy was designed for a completely different store. So let me take you through my three human truths today. Number one, you're hiring for transactions and Gen Z needs an experience.

2:02The ICSE research on third spaces is clear. When Gen Z chooses a physical retail destination, they're not evaluating it primarily on product selection or price. They're evaluating it on atmosphere, energy, and the quality of human interaction they experience there. The malls seeing the strongest recovery have understood this. They've redesigned their tenant mix around experience, wellness centers, food halls, entertainment venues, and maybe pop-up activations built specifically for social sharing. And the anchor isn't the department store anymore. The anchor is the feeling of being somewhere worth being.

2:45And the stores thriving inside those malls have made the same shift. They've stopped optimizing purely for transactional efficiency and started optimizing for experience quality, which means the person on the floor isn't just processing a sale. They're there to create a memory. But here's the problem. Most retail hiring processes are still built around transaction efficiency. Can you operate a POS? Can you fold a shirt or do gobacks? Can you work on Saturday morning? Those are the questions we're asking, but they're the wrong questions for the stores we're actually running in 2026. Now, I want to be really direct about something, that this is not a criticism of the people doing the hiring.

3:33Most retail hiring managers are working inside systems and job descriptions that were built maybe a decade ago and haven't been meaningfully updated since. But the store has changed and the customer has changed and the role has changed in ways that most job descriptions haven't caught up with yet. Think about what we're actually asking the frontline associates to do in 2026. We're asking them to welcome a Gen Z customer who may have already researched the product more thoroughly than probably our own team.

4:08Ron Thurston:We're asking them to navigate a technology stack that includes things like AI assistance and smart fitting rooms and mobile checkout. We're asking them to be brand ambassadors in a store where 52 % of the customers will probably photograph and post about their visit. and we're paying them the same wage, giving them the same two-hour onboarding and writing the same job description that we've always written. In Retail Pride, my first book, I wrote about the three qualities that define the greatest retail people I've ever worked with and they're empathy, curiosity, and focus. They aren't product knowledge.

4:47Ron Thurston:They aren't sales techniques. They aren't schedule flexibility, empathy, curiosity, and focus. And those three qualities are exactly what the experience economy demands. Empathy, the ability to step out of your own world and into someone else's, to hear what they're actually looking for, not just what they asked for. Curiosity is the drive to know more, to ask better questions, to be genuinely care about the answer. and focus the ability to be fully present with one customer in a store full of distractions. And those qualities just don't show up on a resume. They show up in every customer interaction.

5:32And Gen Z, who can feel the difference between a genuine human connection and a scripted transaction, will notice it immediately when they're absent.

5:43Ron Thurston:Let's move on to human truth number two. your onboarding for transaction is failing the experience economy. So here's the question that I ask retail leaders all the time. How long does it take a new frontline hire to reach the full productivity in your company? And the most common answer is six to eight weeks. And that's also the number McKinsey uses too. Takes roughly two months before a new associate can operate at the same level as some of your best people. But here's always my follow-up question. What are you teaching them during those two months? Because if the answer is primarily systems, policies, processes, product knowledge, you're preparing them from the store that you used to run in the past, not the one Gen Z is walking into today.

6:35Ron Thurston:UKG's global frontline study found that 47 % of frontline workers feel there are two separate cultures in their company. one for the stores and one for everyone else. And nowhere is that gap more visible than in how we onboard new hires. We give them the operational layer, but we rarely give them the experiential layer, the part that answers the question, what does it actually feel like to work here? What does it feel like to be a customer here? Now, I have onboarded hundreds, if not more, frontline associates in my career. have opened hundreds of stores and the ones who became exceptional, the ones who built real relationships with customers, who had lines of people waiting specifically for them, who other team members looked up to, they all had one thing in common.

7:26Ron Thurston:Someone invested in them early, not just in what to do, but why it mattered. Someone took the time to explain not just how to fold the shirt or process a return, but what this store means to the people who come here. What a great day in retail might look like. What a customer who leaves feeling genuinely helped looks like versus one who just completed the transaction. In Retail Pride, I write about the fact that 32 % of all first jobs are in retail and one in four American teenagers works in this industry. And for many of the people on your front line right now, that's where their professional identity is formed.

8:06It's where they learn how to work. And this is where they're learning what it means to serve someone, to show up with purpose, and take pride in their work. And that is an

8:17Ron Thurston:extraordinary responsibility. And most onboarding programs treat it like a compliance exercise. The retailers winning with Gen Z are the ones who understand that onboarding isn't employee orientation. It's the first chapter in someone's retail story. And if you write that chapter with empathy, you show a new associate that their presence here really matters. And the customers they're about to meet are real people with real needs. And they have the ability to make that person's day better. and you have given them something that no training module can replicate. You've given them pride. And pride, as I've written about extensively and believed in for my entire career, is what keeps people in the building.

9:06It's what makes the difference between someone who shows up and someone who just shows up with purpose. And lastly, human truth number three. The retailers building for the experience economy

9:19Ron Thurston:are rewriting this role. So what does it look like when a retailer builds a hiring and development strategy for the experience economy? What are the best operators doing differently? Well, the first thing they've changed is what they're selecting for. The retailers seeing the strongest Gen Z engagement are hiring for emotional intelligence, communication skills, and genuine curiosity about people. They're asking different interview questions, not things like, can you work on the weekends, but tell me a time you made someone's day better. Not, are you comfortable with new technology, but how do you learn something new when you're just thrown into it?

10:02Ron Thurston:The second thing they change is how they define success. The old metrics, as we know, around conversion rate, units per transaction, but the new metrics for the retailers who are really serious about Gen Z include things like dwell time, return visit rates, and social engagement. Because a customer who stayed 40 minutes and then came back three weeks later and posted about the experience to their 8 ,000 followers is worth more than a single high-ticket transaction. And the third thing, and maybe the most important, is how they're investing in the manager who develops that frontline team because you can hire the right people and onboard them intentionally and then put them under a manager who doesn't have the time or the training or the support to development and everything you invested in steps one and two evaporate within 90 days and the through line across all of this is that the experience economy isn't a trend It's a structural shift in what retail is for, and it demands a structural shift in how we build retail teams.

11:16And that shift starts with a simple question that most hiring processes never ask. What kind of person thrives in an environment where the customer came in looking for a connection, where the product is almost secondary to the feeling of being here? In Retail Pride, I describe the retail associates who educate and comfort and encourage. That's always been the highest expression of this work. And in 2026, with Gen Z walking into your stores specifically because they want to feel something, that description has never been more valuable or, to be honest, more relevant.

11:55Ron Thurston:There's a special light that shines brighter in retail people. I wrote that in Retail Pride, and I believe it more today than when I first put it on the page seven years ago. That natural sense of positivity, a constant drive to connect, the ability to make a stranger feel welcome in under 30 seconds. These people exist in every community in this country. They're not that rare. But what's rare is a hiring process designed to find them. What's rare is an onboarding program designed to develop them. And what's rare is a manager who has the time, the tools, and the investment to keep them there. The experience economy is here.

12:39Gen Z is proving it. The only question now is whether your talent strategy is built for the store you're running or the one you used to run.

12:49Ron Thurston:Because the store you're running, you hire for empathy, curiosity, and focus. Invest in the people delivering the experience. And that's not a soft strategy. That's the most practical competitive move available to any retailer right now. So to wrap up, here's the question I want you to carry into the week. Pull up your current frontline job description. Read it like a Gen Z customer would read it if they knew it actually existed. Does it describe someone who could make them feel welcome in that third space? someone with the warmth and the curiosity and the presence to turn a 40-minute browsing session to a genuine human connection?

13:32Ron Thurston:Or does it describe someone who can operate a register and fold a shirt? Because the store you're running in 2026 deserves a job description that matches that, and the Gen Z customer walking through your door deserves to be met by someone hired and developed for exactly this moment. And I understand closing that gap is work. It's not glamorous. It doesn't make headlines the way an AI deployment does. But this is the single highest return investment available to any retailer. Hire intentionally, on board with purpose, develop relentlessly. The experience economy rewards exactly that. And Gen Z, the generation that came back to the store looking for something real will reward you for that too.

14:20Ron Thurston:Now, every source referenced today is linked in the show notes. The research on Gen Z hiring and experience retail is deep and definitely worth your time. So go explore it. And if today connected with something you're navigating right now, like the gap between the team you have and the experience economy demands, I want to point you to two books. Retail Pride, my first number one bestseller, is the foundational read for anyone who wants to understand what empathy, curiosity, and focus look like in practice and on the sales floor. It was written for everyone who has ever said, I work in retail, and not felt truly proud of those words, and for every leader who wants to build a team that is.

15:04Ron Thurston:And Human Pride came out in 2025, goes deeper into the human potential dimension and what it takes to optimize your people in a digital world. Of course, both are always available on Amazon and at RonThurston.com. I'm Ron Thurston. This is Retail in America. If this episode made you feel differently about who you're hiring and why it mattered more than ever, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Follow or subscribe wherever you're listening so that you never miss what's coming next. And I can't wait to see you on the next episode.