Obviously, the hiring of workers for an enterprise as huge as Macy's
cannot be conducted on any hit-and-miss plan. We have gone far enough
with the store in these pages to see that hit-and-miss does not figure
at any time or place in its varied functionings--and nowhere less than
in its employment department. The hiring of new workers for the store is
indeed a branch of the business machine that receives constant and great
care and systematic attention. A store must employ the right sort of
people in order to be a good store. This is fairly axiomatic these days.
These workers are gathered in a variety of ways--by volunteer
applications, by newspaper advertisements (in New York and outside of
it), by outside free employment agencies, by circular appeals generally
to educational institutions, and, best of all, through the solicitation
of its regular employees. There is no appeal for a worker that, in my
opinion, can compare with the suggestion made by an employee that the
place of his or her employment is a good place for his or her friends,
as well.
I am warmly concurred with in this opinion by the store's employment
manager, a big, upstanding man, who in his Harvard days was a famous
football player. The rules of that fine game he has brought to the
understanding of his present problem.
"One of the most desirable class of applicants is that brought by our
own employees," he says, frankly, "as in hiring these people we have a
feeling of security; especially if they have been brought in by some of
the old and most loyal employees. It has been our experience that such
applicants enter more readily into the spirit of their work and develop
more rapidly than those obtained from other sources. We advertise in the
classified columns of the newspapers only when it is absolutely
necessary. Our regular daily advertisements keep the store constantly
before the public eye--and generally that is enough.
"During the recent war period, however, we had no scruples about
advertising, as nearly every other line of endeavor was in the same boat
as we. Never before have the newspapers carried so much classified
advertising. Yet when all is said and done, besides the moral
undesirability of this source of supply, we found it also very expensive
indeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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