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.

Unlike on an auto assembly line, working crew jobs means being a master of many skills. The more skills crew members are willing and able to learn, the more valuable they are. That means selection should focus on a breadth of skills. For example, some of the bigger brands have developed Internet tools that simulate sandwich assembly operations. If you can’t afford to develop Internet tools, though, I think you can effectively use props of product components (maybe made out of plastic or rubber) and let applicants practice following directions assembling these components into standard products. Nothing says a test can’t be an hour long and involve watching an applicant put together replicas of products. Those who progress nicely get hired.

Another way to measure ability, one I’ve seen managers use with too much regularity, is to hire someone, monitor performance for a period, then for those who don’t have a good learning curve, cut hours until they decide to leave on their own.

In my experience it’s much harder to select on the motivation dimension. Almost everyone works hard when the lines are long. Lunch rush is a portrait of planned chaos—but everyone works. Before and after lunch rush, though, the best workers are thinking about what needs to be done and doing it before the manager even asks.

The unfortunate reality is it’s much easier to devise ability tests than motivation tests. Even a decade ago, the best motivation tests were slightly better than a coin toss at determining if an applicant would be motivated.

Today though there are a variety of ways to measure motivation. The most popular is a test that measures the Big Five personality traits. The Big Five are the widely accepted personality dimensions of Openness to new ideas, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Emotional Stability. A typical Big Five test would ask a series of self-descriptive questions that begin with: I see myself as someone who is … [add a descriptor such as talkative]. Applicants are asked if they agree with this statement or disagree on a five-point scale.

Want to know if these five traits should be used in your selection? First, split your workforce into the best and the rest, or maybe into three groups based on performance. Then administer one of the many Big Five questionnaires or whatever selection tool you’re interested in.

How do the best crew members differ on these dimensions from the not-so-good employees? Do they score higher on conscientiousness (a common finding)? Are they up and down emotionally? If there is a real difference in scores between high and low performers on any of the dimension,s then maybe the Big Five is a good tool for you.

Interviews also assess motivation. I recommend a behaviorally based format. Behaviorally based interviewing (BBI) has widespread credibility (eg. “Give me an example of a time when you displayed good leadership skills.”). In the old days interviews were, at best, hit and miss in picking good crew members. BBI has dramatically increased accuracy. Get on this fast-moving bandwagon!

Investing time and money in selection can have huge benefits. It’s important to get the people the first time who have the right attitude, the willingness to learn, and are reliable.

You’ll spend the time now, instead of paying the price later.

Dr. Jerry Newman is the author of approximately 100 articles on human resource issues and the best-seller My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons in Leadership Guaranteed to Supersize any Management Style. Contact him at Drjerry@qsrmagazine.com.