HIRING AND ONBOARDING FOR ENERGY
Bring in people who naturally add spark to the store.

By Alan Miklofsky, November 22, 2025

When a retailer tells me, “We just need better people,” what they usually mean is far simpler: they need people with energy. Not acrobat-on-a-trampoline energy. Just humans who wake up wanting to participate in life rather than merely survive it. Your store thrives when your staff radiates curiosity, enthusiasm, and a spark that customers can feel from twenty feet away.

But you don’t get these people by accident. You identify them intentionally, hire them decisively, and onboard them in a way that catapults them into your culture before cynicism can whisper in their ear.

Below is the playbook.

Identifying Energy in an Interview: Ask the Questions That Reveal the Person, Not the Résumé

Most retailers interview backward. They ask the most generic questions known to humankind and then act surprised when they hire low-voltage employees. Instead, ask the questions that wake people up.

Consider questions like:

• “What’s something you’ve taught yourself recently?”
If they light up, you’ve struck gold. Curiosity and self-initiative are rocket fuel.

• “Tell me about a time you helped someone and felt genuinely proud.”
You’re looking for emotional engagement, not checkbox answers.

• “When you walk into a store as a customer, what behaviors from staff energize you?”
If they can describe it, they can often deliver it.

• “What’s the last situation that required you to stay positive under pressure?”
A high-energy hire knows how to “reboot” themselves in tough moments.

You’re listening for speed, warmth, authenticity, humor, story-telling, spark. The specifics matter less than whether you can imagine this person walking into your store and lifting the place ten degrees.

Onboarding That Creates Momentum From Day One

A new hire’s first week determines whether you get a spark plug or another warm body clocking in.

Make Day One feel like they’ve joined something that actually matters:

• Have a welcome sign ready. Low effort, high impact.
• Introduce them to everyone — don’t leave them orbiting the sales floor like a lonely planet.
• Explain not just the what but the why: why energy matters, why customers love you, why the store succeeds.
• Walk them through the store as if you’re giving a backstage tour of a Broadway show.

And critically: don’t bury them in paperwork first. Start with connection, purpose, and excitement. Admin can come after they feel like part of the tribe.

Pair New Hires With Your High-Energy Ambassadors — Never With the Cynics

Every store has “that one associate” whose enthusiasm can power a small city… and another who could drain the joy out of a birthday party.

Pair new hires with the first group, not the second.

Your high-energy role models:

• Greet customers before the door finishes closing
• Smile with their whole face
• Treat selling as helping, not hustling
• Move with intention, not limp through the shift
• See the good in the work, even on slow days

Pairing a new hire with a cynic is retail malpractice. They’ll spend the first three days learning all the reasons “this place doesn’t work,” and you’ll spend the next three months trying to undo that poison.

Build a short list of your internal energy carriers. These are your culture transmitters. When a new hire connects with them early, the store becomes a place where they want to succeed.

The Bottom Line

Hiring for energy and onboarding for momentum is the closest thing retail has to a cheat code. You can teach product knowledge. You can train fitting technique. You can drill add-on sales. But you cannot install a personality upgrade into someone who’s walking around like their battery is forever stuck at 6 percent.

Hire spark. Celebrate it. Pair it with more spark.
And watch your store lift itself.

Copyright 2025 Alan Miklofsky

www.AlanMiklofsky.com