Solutions by Industry

District Manager Selection: A Case Study

A leading retailer used APT to identify talented managers and improve hiring processes.

  • As with most retailers, the client knew that district managers have a significant impact on district/store performance.
  • The human resources department invested considerable resources in cultivating and growing talent. However, HR personnel had limited empirical analysis to help them identify talented managers during the hiring process.
  • APT's Test and Learn™ Management System automatically modeled and identified which background characteristics were the best predictors of success in a manager.
  • The company's understanding of the drivers of manager success is helping its HR Department pick the right candidates.
The Company:

A large North American retailer with 800+ stores

The Challenge:

The company wanted to hire managers who would be able to successfully maximize sales and margin in their store/districts.

The Solution:

The retailer had to identify which store and district managers were high performers and which were low performers.  Using APT's Test & Learn for Sites™ the retailer was able to efficiently and rigorously model the change in store performance after the manager was introduced as the indicator of manager quality. Then, APT automatically de-averaged the change in performance to see which stores had large performance improvements (good managers) and which stores experienced no lift (poor managers).

The retailer then used APT's Test & Learn for Sites™ to automatically model and identify which background characteristics were the best predictors of success in a manager. The results were often contrary to pre-existing beliefs, resulting in a change of direction in hiring focus. For example, the client found that individuals with prior store manager experience within their company were far more likely to be successful district managers, than people who had prior district manager experience for other companies. The findings were able to immediately inform hiring practices at the retailer.

Results:

The client is now using the analysis from APT's Test & Learn for Sites™ to guide its manager hiring decisions. The company's understanding of the drivers of manager success is helping its HR Department pick the right candidates.