Top 10 Character Traits for Working in a Gallery
Recruiting and retaining good staff can be really hard for a small business. The way your staff are with your customers can make or break your business and often the characteristics you’re looking for aren’t the ones that are listed in someone’s CV.
So what do we look for when we’re hiring?
First Class Communication Skills
Working with the general public can be tricky as those of us that work in this sector know only too well, so having someone who has excellent communications skills is absolutely vital to the role. They need to be able to relate to customers quickly whether this is in the gallery, via email or over the phone – customers want to feel that you want to help them.
Optimistic and Friendly
We see this as putting our customers at their ease, wishing them a cheery hello when they come into the gallery and really caring about their experience whilst they are with us.
Caring & Compassionate
As a gallery, framer and local business we are often party to the highs and lows of our 
customers lives. Being able to deal with these joys and sorrows requires a sensitive and caring nature and sometimes the offer of a hanky and a hug goes a long way!
Self – Control & Patience
When dealing with the general public you will always come across tricky customers and I’m sure we’ve been that tricky person ourselves at times! Having an abundance of self-control and patience, when everything in you wants to tell the person exactly what you think of the way they are behaving, is absolutely vital. It’s about making sure that the customer feels they are being heard and that they know you are doing everything within your power to help them.
Team Player
For any business to succeed it’s really important that everyone can work well together so when you’re recruiting staff it’s important to think whether they will fit in with everyone else you employ. They will often be spending more time in your company than anyone else so it’s important that you can all get on!
Helpful & Resourceful
The customer always comes first and is ALWAYS right (eek) so this means we should ALWAYS be willing to go the extra mile to please each and every customer, wherever it is practicably possible. For us it’s offering to drop off framing on our way home or meeting someone in a car park to hand over an expensive painting so it gets there in time for Christmas – yep we’ve done that few times over the years!
So in a nutshell you’re looking for someone who is communicative, kind, conscientious, polite and huggable!