Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Finding excellent seasonal employees is one of the greatest challenges college stores face. Bookstore jobs require intelligence, commitment and solid customer service skills. What’s the best way to attract good workers?

Each year MBS hires more than 500 temporary employees for rush. We sat down with MBS Vice President of Human Resources Jerome Rader to discuss recruiting tips and tricks — as well as potential red flags in the hiring process. With 27 years of MBS HR experience, Rader offers a wealth of expertise for college retailers.

A customer walks into your store, eyes glued to their phone. Barely acknowledging the employee’s greeting, they wander through the store briefly before leaving without making a purchase. This is common in retail. Consumers are distracted, and it is hard to get their attention. That’s where smart beacons can change the store’s interaction with the customer, making the experience better for both.

You are five minutes late to meet a friend, but you also have to pick up a couple things before the store closes. You rush inside the store, hoping to get in and out quickly. Immediately you are greeted by rows of overstuffed shelves with more merchandise that you can take in at a glance. You scan the store looking for someone to help you or a sign pointing you in the way you need to go. You only see flashy, red sale signage and uninterested faces. Already late, you squeeze your way through the aisles searching for the few things that you needed to pick up. Your phone rings. It’s your friend asking where you are. You shove the items you managed to find onto the shelves and leave because you don’t have time to deal with it right now.

Discovering what satisfies customers can be as simple as self-reflection. Young and old, we want courteous, swift service that meets a need, slakes a thirst or fulfills a desire. We also want shopping to be fun, and we want associates to be personable and informed. However, knowing when and how a customer experience has gone awry is complicated.

A growing number of students are choosing not to purchase their course materials because of the cost associated with them. The practice causes the problems one would expect: more student stress as their grades take a hit, teacher frustration at students not being prepared and a lot of finger-pointing from everyone. The students blame the bookstore and the school. The bookstore could have had better prices on inventory if the faculty had their adoptions in on time. The faculty, in turn, are unaware of how their role can impact the cost to the student. Few people outside of the college store understand the whole process beginning to end — but everyone has an opinion. People want more cost-savings options. After new, used and digital course materials, what’s left? Rental.

MBS Systems’ cloud-based retail management system, Arc, offers single sign-on access to all your back-office work. Move seamlessly from one task to the next without breaking stride. View detailed graphics and charts on critical store data. Take action within seconds of receiving quality information.

A student stares down at rows of books, perplexed, eyebrows drawn together as she squints at the shelf tags between the constant stream of other students shuffling by. To her left, another student stands with his friends trying to look up the books he needs online.

Big data has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our lives. It determines the advertisements we see, the routes our GPS directs us, the posts we encounter on social media, unusual activity on our credit cards, entertainment recommendations from streaming services and the list could go on. Big data has become big business.

YouTube is huge. As a platform, it has the potential for enormous reach and is one of the most intimidating areas of social media. Videos have a permanency that other platforms lack. The production value of the most popular videos keeps getting better and people want to see regular content. YouTube, as a marketing platform, isn’t for everyone. It requires a level of energy and comfort with the camera that cannot be manufactured. For those who can truly embrace it, it is a game changer.