From Running Stores to Recruiting for Them: Frazer’s Story
Fifteen years in retail teaches you a lot that never appears on a job description.
How to read a customer. How to get the best out of different personalities. How to have a difficult conversation without it becoming a bigger one. How to keep a team going when you’re short-staffed. And how to deal with the hundred things that can go wrong before lunchtime without the customer seeing any of them.
Frazer Ansell knows that world because he spent 15 years in it.
He started as a Sales Assistant at Next and worked his way through store management roles across the UK. By the time he left, he was a Senior Store Manager with responsibility for 15 outlet stores across the north of England.
In 2021, he joined Zachary Daniels with no recruitment experience. Today, he’s a Business Manager at ZD, recruiting into the same world he spent 15 years working in.
So when a Store Manager talks to him about their next move, or a Retail Director briefs him on the person they need, there’s a lot they don’t have to explain.
Some of Frazer’s best examples of what retail is really like would never make it onto a job description.
He remembers working through the night with his team building furniture for a new homeware department in Oldham, eventually finishing with pizza at midnight, so customers could walk into a completely different store the following morning without knowing what had happened behind the scenes.
Then there were the Christmas Eves when the doors might close to customers at three, but the team stayed until six getting everything ready for Boxing Day.
If you’ve worked in stores, you’ll have your own version of those stories.
They’re part of what makes retail, retail.
And they’re why words on a job description like “resilient”, “hands-on”, “commercial” and “fast-paced” mean a little more once you’ve actually lived them.
Recruitment definitely wasn’t the plan
Frazer moved from Next to Gap through ZD, years before he’d have ever guessed he’d end up working here himself.
When Gap later announced the closure of its UK stores, Frazer found himself helping people in his own team with CVs, interviews and finding their next move.
In fact, most of them had found another job before he had.
It was probably the first sign that recruitment might suit him, even if he didn’t know it at the time.
In 2021, he joined ZD.
No recruitment experience. Fifteen years of retail.
As Frazer puts it:
Having done the job gives you a lot more confidence in the conversations. You’re not learning it from scratch, you already know it.
That’s true whether he’s talking to a Store Manager about a difficult store, or a Retail Director about the person they actually need, rather than just the job title they’ve written down.
If you’re a Store Manager thinking about your next move
So much of what makes you good at the job doesn’t fit neatly onto a CV.
Recruiting people. Coaching underperformance. Developing future managers. Managing costs. Handling difficult customers. Delivering change. Getting through peak. Making commercial decisions every day, not just on the good ones.
Frazer also knows that two Store Manager roles can be completely different.
Mainline versus outlet. Premium versus value. Flagship versus a smaller format. A turnaround versus taking over a team that’s already performing. A hands-on Area Manager versus one who gives you room to run things your way.
That’s why Frazer’s conversations with Store Managers aren’t just about store size, turnover and team numbers.
What are you actually good at?
What kind of environment gets the best out of you?
What do you want more of in your next role?
What do you definitely not want to repeat?
Because finding another Store Manager job and finding the right next move aren’t necessarily the same thing.
If you’re recruiting a Store Manager
Five years of Store Manager experience on a CV doesn’t automatically mean someone is right for your store.
Frazer has recruited, managed and developed people himself, so he knows the questions behind the CV matter just as much as the job title on it.
What kind of team did they lead?
What did they inherit, and what did they improve?
How commercial are they, really?
Can they develop people, or just manage them?
What happens when the plan goes wrong?
And does the environment they’ve been successful in actually resemble yours?
Frazer knows from his own retail career that sometimes the right person isn’t necessarily the most obvious person on paper.
And before he started searching for your next Store Manager, there are five things he’d want to get clear with you:
- What does this person need to achieve or change in their first six months?
- What’s the team they’re inheriting really like?
- What leadership style tends to succeed in your business?
- Which parts of the brief are genuinely non-negotiable, and what could you teach?
- Why would a strong Store Manager leave a good job elsewhere to join you?
The answers change who you should be looking for.
And they give Frazer something far more useful to take to the market than a list of responsibilities.
He changed careers. He didn’t start from zero.
Moving into recruitment meant learning a completely new job.
But Frazer wasn’t starting from scratch.
Reading people. Building relationships. Understanding what motivates someone. Handling pressure. Problem-solving. Taking ownership when things don’t go to plan.
He’d spent 15 years learning all of that in stores. He’d just never thought of them as recruitment skills.
One of the biggest things retail taught him was that the same approach doesn’t work for everyone:
You can’t manage everyone the same way and expect to get the best out of them. Understanding what motivates someone lets you adapt how you manage and develop them.
That translates pretty well into recruitment.
There was plenty he still had to learn, of course. Recruitment has its own processes, tools and commercial challenges, and Frazer is very open about business development being one of his biggest learning curves.
But retail itself?
I didn’t need to relearn retail. It was like having a bit of a cheat code.
Five years on, he’s a Business Manager at ZD and one of our Employee Owned Trustees, having been voted into the role by his colleagues.
So if you’re reading this from behind the counter, in the stockroom or after another late finish and wondering whether your retail experience could take you somewhere different, it might be more transferable than you think.
We know retail because we’ve worked in it
Frazer’s not the only person at ZD who came into recruitment after building a career in retail.
Across our Retail Operations team, we’ve got people who’ve managed stores, led teams, recruited people and worked the Christmases, weekends, refits and everything else that comes with it.
Does working in retail automatically make someone a good recruiter?
Of course not.
But it does mean that when you’re talking about the reality of your job, or briefing us on the person you need, there’s a good chance you’re speaking to someone who already understands where you’re coming from.
For Frazer, those 15 years haven’t disappeared.
He just uses them from the other side of the conversation now.
Want to have a chat with frazer?
Whether you’re looking for your next move in Retail Operations, recruiting a Store Manager, Area Manager or Regional Manager, or you’re curious about where your own retail experience could take you, Frazer would be happy to have a conversation.
FAQs
Does it matter if your retail recruiter has worked in retail?
Not necessarily. Plenty of brilliant retail recruiters haven’t worked in stores themselves. But first-hand experience can add another layer of understanding, particularly when you’re discussing different store environments, leadership challenges and what a role actually looks like beyond the job description.
For someone like Frazer, it means he can draw on both 15 years of retail experience and five years of recruitment experience when working with clients and candidates.
Can Store Managers move into recruitment?
Yes. Retail management develops plenty of skills that transfer into recruitment, including communication, relationship building, understanding people, problem-solving, resilience and commercial awareness.
Frazer joined ZD after 15 years in retail with no previous recruitment experience.
What should you look for when recruiting a Store Manager?
Previous Store Manager experience is only part of the picture. The environment someone has worked in, the teams they’ve led, what they’ve improved, their commercial capability, leadership style and people development experience can all help determine whether they’re right for a particular store.
Does Zachary Daniels recruit Store Managers, Area Managers and Regional Managers?
Yes. Our Retail Operations team recruits across Store Manager, Area Manager and Regional Manager roles, alongside wider store and field leadership appointments.
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