By Maggie Bayless, ZingTrain’s founding partner

One way Zingerman’s does this is through a “pretest.” The idea of a pretest is simple: It is a test given either as part of the interview process or at the beginning of a new hire’s very first shift. Successfully passing the test is a prerequisite for moving ahead — either to the next interview or to being scheduled to work. The content of the pretest is very basic: information or a skill that is essential to successfully fulfilling the job. The purpose of the pretest is to give job applicants an opportunity to demonstrate their willingness and/or ability to a) learn new material, b) demonstrate aptitude for the skills needed to do the job, and c) take responsibility for their own learning.

The original Zingerman’s pretest is a written test with 5-10 questions, including very important, but very basic, facts that every employee needs to know:

• What is the business’s phone number?
• The street address?
• What’s the best way to describe the location to someone who calls for driving directions?
• Who are the key managers?
• What is the No. 1-selling product?

We hand out the pretest, along with the answers, when someone is hired. We explain that they are expected to know the answers to these questions by the beginning of their first shift. We ask what questions they have and what they may be confused about. This is where we start to get a feel for how they do/don’t take responsibility for their own training. The ones who take the time to read over the test and ask a question or two (“Do we have to know the managers’ last names or just first names? Do we have to spell them correctly?”) are most likely to be the employees who continue to ask questions and actively seek out information.

When new hires report for their first shift, they are given a copy of the test without the answers and asked to complete it. (If the employee has literacy problems, the manager may ask the test questions orally.) If the new hire completes the test successfully, great, they stay and complete the shift. If not, we ask them to go home, study and come back the next day. If they can’t pass the test on the second try, they are done. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, we know we’ve identified someone who either can’t or won’t take the time to learn basic information that’s needed to be successful on the job. Identifying and weeding out those people early saves lots of time, money and frustration.

Using the pretest at the end of the interview process helps identify those people who interview really well, but then don’t follow through. To tell you the truth, the people who don’t pass the pretest are not usually those who have test phobia, learning disabilities or language problems. They tend to be the people who don’t take the pretest seriously, so they don’t bother to learn the information. They talk a good game, but they don’t deliver. And they have 1,001 excuses why they didn’t have time. Warning! If they don’t have time to learn the material on the pretest, they won’t have time to learn your cash-handling procedures, the way you want the displays built, or the names and prices of your key products. On the other hand, most new hires are very eager to learn all they can about your operation and welcome an opportunity to share what they know.

Think about the last time you had that sinking feeling in your stomach that you’d hired the wrong person. You’d been high on them after the interview, but once they started working, you just knew it wasn’t going to work out. How long did it take you to get that feeling? Two weeks? Two days? And how long did it take before you acted on your gut feeling — and the mounting evidence — and let them go? If you’re like most managers I know, it took at least a month … maybe more. So you’ve paid that person for four weeks and invested management time in training them, all the while feeling that you are trying to bail out a sinking boat. Let’s just estimate the labor cost: four weeks x 40 hours/week x $10/hour = $1,600. This doesn’t even touch the cost of management time, lost sales due to mistakes, etc.

Figuring out that someone isn’t a good fit before you’ve hired them — and certainly before you’ve invested a lot in training them — obviously is better for your bottom line.

Will using a pretest guarantee that you won’t make a hiring mistake? Of course not. But if you save yourself even one bad hire in a year, you’ll get an excellent return on the investment of the 30 minutes (max) it took you to develop and type up the test. If you’d like a copy of a pretest that we have used here at Zingerman’s, drop me an email at mbaylesszingermanscom  (mbaylesszingermanscom)  . Small investments of time to create tools that lead to positive bottom-line results — that’s the “secret” to Bottom-Line Training.

Using the pretest at the end of the interview process helps identify those people who interview really well, but then don’t follow through.