We have a small retail store and several people come to hang out and say they want to work here. Problem is that they are not qualified to work here, we want friendly, approachable people and a couple of them are ****agers and people with little to no people skills. How do you let these people know that they are welcome to stop in as customers but can not be employees?

This is a difficult situation because you never want to offend a customer, however it sounds like these customers are not your ideal type of customer because they sound young. I am assuming by the name that you run a bike store, if so, most of your customers are not repeat customers so you cant lose that much by telling a white lie. I would say that you recently had a customer come in that complained that there was not a lot of help in the store when if fact there was it was just that they were talking to you (the kids that were hanging out) as a result my boss has asked us to focus on our customers and would be upset if it happens again

There is a similar thread in the small business discussion you may want to look at if you are interested

Shooting from the hip here ...

In my world of HR (human resources), a job description would take care of the matter. My job descriptions are usually 2 pages long because I'm quite specific about the technical and soft skills applicants need for the position (this is also helpful for current employees trying to move up). The soft skills would be things like "proven" customer service and people skills, but I add a lot of detail so it's easy to understand. Then you could simply show these people the job description and let them see for themselves that they don't have the qualifications. If you have a job description but it has those one-liner descriptions of the duties, then it won't be helpful here.

Typically you want to hire people who have experience with any skills you require. If you have only hired people with that experience ... meaning that they can give you actual work examples of that behavior/skill ... then you could just explain to your wannabe's what type of experience you need. If they say they have it, ask for a previous supervisor's name/number to call for a reference (and confirmation).

If one of the problems is simply that they keep asking about work, just make a sign entitled "job openings" or "help wanted" with space under it to list your positions ... when you aren't hiring, just add a note that says "not hiring at this time." If they have a way of knowing when you are looking, hopefully they will stop asking.

Sorry, I know I'm throwing things out that may not help. Without knowing your normal HR practices regarding hiring, etc., I can't be more specific or helpful.

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C.J.

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I would tell them to take a b(h)ike