My February column summarized a scientific study showing that good selection practices lead to all kinds of good people (e.g., lower turnover) and monetary outcomes. I’d like to talk today in more detail about what it means to have good selection practices.

One of your early tasks should be to figure out what it takes to be a good employee in your store. Take a few minutes to compare your best crew members to those who are average or worse. I suspect the answer differs by job. Not all jobs are created equal!

In my value system, customer interface jobs are critical. Too often as a customer I’ve placed orders with crew members who could easily be replaced by a disgruntled robot. If you want John Customer to come back, and that should be a huge priority for every store, the first contact needs to be positive. We have all kinds of studies that indicate people assess others in the very first seconds of a meeting. Front-end jobs capture those first seconds, and the jobs must be staffed with crew members who have verbal skills and positive personalities.

In the back of the store, there are also key jobs—ones that usually serve as command central. At Burger King, for example, the first sandwich board is the hub of activity. Orders on the screen are rapidly assigned to different team members by a crew-member coordinator. These assembly jobs are high pressure and require both mental and manual dexterity.

Filling these key jobs with the right person is critical. In my mind these front end and head-assembly jobs are perfect for internal advancement, meted out as a reward for having performed well on jobs lower in the skill pecking order.

So what should you do when you must decide whom to interview among a number of applicants for entry jobs? And who should you finally hire? These selection questions have two parts. Who has the best package of abilities? And who has the motivation, or can be motivated, to use these abilities when needed?

Unfortunately, it’s much easier to identify applicants who have the skill than it is to identify highly motivated people. Let’s talk about selecting for skill and for motivation.

I found Bassrocks post about open kitchens while searching Paella.

My wife and I have become real fans and have several questions.

Does anyone serve in their operations. ( Can't figure out how to hold, scorch, overcook rice, seafood rubbery, etc.)

I would like to transform my current Italian restaurant into a sport cafe serving pizza, burgers and wings.  What are the positives and negatives? My idea is to have these three big sellers but in the simpliest way possible. The use of a conveyor pizza oven is on my mind. Any thought, advise and suggestion on this?