Donald Satz wrote:

>The hiring example does not fit.  It's a common fallacy that the selecting
>person must have knowledge of the field that he/she is hiring for.  That is
>not a significant element.  It's a cinch to hire technically knowledgeable
>persons but much harder to hire individuals who possess good work ethics,
>interact well with others, step up their performance at critical times, and
>focus properly during work hours.  I've been hiring attorneys for twenty
>years, and every applicant has the requisite legal skills.  So, the focus
>of my interview process never includes technical knowledge.

 From my perspective and experience it is very difficult to hire someone
with the required technical skills.  Often times you aren't aware how
deficient an employee is until you can observe someone who really does know
their business.  From your perspective you might be "getting the job done"
with a particular hire, but then somewhere down the road you might hire
someone who really knows better and you are aware of how little you really
did know since your expectations were relatively low.

What would be the technical qualifications for someone to service the
classical section of your record store? A college degree in music?

Look at the range of knowledge of classical music that is shown on this
list.  You could hire someone with a degree in music who may have been an
instrumental major.  They might know the tuba literature, or whatever, but
they may be lost in anything else.  When I managed a record store I wanted
someone who knew a range of literature and was good at handling a wide
variety of questions.  I would wager that most of the members of this list
have a better knowledge of the classical repertoire than most music majors.

How about previous experience as a manager of a classical department...
when Tower opened here in Austin they brought in some guy who had managed
a classical section in another Tower store.  He was terrible, knew very
little repertoire.

How would you choose (interview) a potential manager of a classical
department and what would be the qualifications of such a person?

Karl