‘YOU’RE EITHER ABERCROMBIE HOT – OR YOU’RE NOT’ DORA SCHOLARIOS
American clothing retail firm Abercrombie & Fitch has stores in the UK, Canada, Japan, Singapore and throughout Europe, and is expanding rapidly. It has been ranked 219 in Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing, 2015 and is one of the 1,000 largest American companies according to revenue. Image is central to how the company sells its four brands – Abercrombie & Fitch, Abercrombie Kids, Hollister and Gilly Hicks. Investor materials describe the flagship Abercrombie & Fitch brand as ‘rooted in East Coast traditions and Ivy League heritage’ and ‘the essence of privilege and casual luxury’. The importance of these brand values to the company is shown in an effort to disassociate from the MTV reality show Jersey Shore by paying the cast not to wear its clothes.
The company claim their rowdy behaviour is ‘contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand’ (BBC News, 17 August 2011). As described by one of the employees in the company’s recruitment video, employees are expected to be ambassadors for the brand. Job advertisements are for ‘cool’ and ‘good looking’ applicants (Human Resources News, 2010). A company spokesperson describes their advertisements as just ‘aimed at attracting fun-loving and stylish people for the job’ and as having no discriminatory intent. This approach is consistent with the image they wish to portray of the company and brands they sell.
The job description for sales assistants (called ‘models’) states: ‘Models protect and project the image of the brand through personal style, providing customer service and maintaining presentation standards’ (www .abercrombie.co.uk/anf/careers/model.html). Sales associates and managers reflect the ‘casual, energetic and aspirational attitude of the brands’. One manager described it as, ‘You’re either Abercrombie hot – or you’re not.’ Their ‘look policy’, which was revealed in a 2005 class action discrimination suit brought by 10,000 former job applicants and employees, stipulates that all employees ‘represent Abercrombie & Fitch with natural, classic American style consistent with the company’s brand’ and ‘look great while exhibiting individuality’. Workers must wear a ‘clean, natural, classic hairstyle’ and have nails which extend ‘no more than a quarter inch beyond the tip of the finger’.
Attracting and selecting future leaders, ‘models’ and ‘part-time impacts’ In the world of fashion retail, there is no shortage of young willing workers attracted to the brand cachet of Abercrombie & Fitch. Drawing significantly from the part-time student workforce, many potential applicants, themselves, are ‘brand advocates’. In fact, this is one of the qualities which the company looks for in potential employees. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are used to build a following and a potential pool of self-selected applicants. Once hired, store managers emphasise to new hires that they were selected because of their looks – ‘people see us and they want to be us’ – and they are also given opportunities to be ‘cast’ as billboard models.
Mystery shoppers ensure employees are adhering to company guidelines regarding their look. This ‘image management’ all has a strong impact on future applicants’ expectations of what an Abercrombie & Fitch employee should be like, and, in some at least, shapes the desire to be one of them. The following extracts from online fora (‘The Student Room’ and ‘Glassdoor’) for discussing jobs and employers reveal potential applicants’ perceptions of the company. I’ve had an interview for Hollister’s and for Abercrombie & Fitch. I haven’t heard from any of them yet. But both interviews went really well to [sic] my opinion. Also do you guys think that they hire black people? I am a model, black (chocolate skin) not too skinny and pretty. I am going to attach a picture to this but please let me know of what you think. This company stresses customer service, by using several different taglines, depending on where you’re in the store [fitting room, front room, registers]. They clearly hire based on looks and personality.
I have not seen anyone with acne or any overweight people yet. The selection of graduates for their retail management programme is similar to most other multinational company graduate schemes. There is an emphasis on retail experience, demonstrated behavioural competencies, and a series of panel and one-to-one interviews. The Manager in Training programme is the first step towards becoming a ‘store executive’ (Assistant Manager and then Store Manager) and a future within the company.
We hire nice, smart, talented people who are interested in building a career at Abercrombie & Fitch. We have a strong philosophy of promotion from within. All of our District Managers, Regional Managers, Directors – even the Senior Vice President of Stores – have gone through the Manager in Training program. (www.abercrombie.co.uk/anf/careers) TARGETjobs, an online graduate jobs forum which provides potential applicants with Employer Insights and tips on how to get hired, describes the importance of demonstrating retail experience, details of when applicants have exceeded a set target, and experience of leading and organising others. Even for these positions, the advice from independent experts is to pay attention to style: ‘given that all Managers in Training will be working on the shop floor around their merchandise, having some idea of the style of the stores in which they will be working will certainly help give off the right image’.
Stores Recruiting Teams target Careers Fairs at specific universities, and online recruitment media are used to project the youthful, good-looking and fun company culture. Interviews are described on online careers fora as ‘laid back’, often taking place in a food court or walking around a mall, and involving one or two Store/District Managers. For sales associates, applications are taken ‘in store’, which presents an early opportunity to screen out those who are not ‘Abercrombie hot’. Store managers approach customers to encourage them to apply as potential employees. The company has created a ‘look book’, a collection of images for managers to refer to when hiring. A group interview usually includes questions such as ‘What is your favourite thing about Abercrombie & Fitch, and what style, in your opinion, is the style of Abercrombie & Fitch?’ The role of ‘model’ mainly consists of saying hello to customers rather than folding clothes, replenishing stock or working the tills as in any other retail job. This is left to the part-time ‘impact team’. The person specifications for these two roles are compared in Table 4.3.
Past employees tell some interesting stories about the differences between the roles. Take for example, Luke, posting a response to a BBC News Magazine article on ‘What is the Abercrombie look?’ (26 June 2009). Whilst at uni I worked in the stockroom and as a shop floor maintainer (tidying stock). I was told on many occasions that I was not allowed to speak to the models and they were told they were not allowed to help maintain the look of the room. The amount of flirting is sickening and the favouritism between managers and models is enough to make you gag. Every year we get an intake of models who have just come off of the program shipwrecked and every time the superiority complex was quick to kick in as the ‘hotties’ established themselves apart from the ‘notties’. Is this discrimination? Direct linking of corporate and HR strategy is common in companies which reinforce a brand image through their employees. One well known example is Hooters, the American restaurant chain known for its scantily clad waitresses. The company’s expectations of employees are stated up front in a written contract which all prospective employees must sign. I hereby acknowledge and affirm that the Hooters concept is based on female sex appeal and that the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace. I also expressly acknowledge and affirm I do not find my job duties, uniform requirements or work environment to be intimidating, hostile or unwelcome. (The Guardian, 11 April 2008) The company can claim that its hiring policies simply tailor the employee qualities they are seeking according to the market demands of a solid (mostly male) customer base.
Abercrombie & Fitch may use the same argument to justify hiring based on its ‘look policy’. However, it has come under legal pressure to reform its hiring practices. Class action lawsuits in the US have charged the company with discrimination against minorities and women. In Gonzalez et al. v Abercrombie & Fitch (14 April 2005), Latino, African American, Asian American and female job applicants or former employees (the plaintiffs) argued that they were either limited to low visibility, back-of-the-store type jobs or terminated because of their race or ethnicity. The settlement agreement required, among other conditions:
• that the company abide by ‘benchmarks’ for hiring and promotion of the affected groups;
• a prohibition on targeting (predominantly white) fraternities, sororities and specific colleges for recruitment;
• advertising in publications which targeted minorities of both genders;
• Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Training for all employees with hiring authority;
• that managers’ performance evaluations and bonuses should be based on making progress toward diversity goals;
• marketing materials which reflect diversity. They appointed a Vice President of Diversity and Diversity and Inclusion Team to build a culture that fosters ‘personal commitment to diversity’ (Racing towards Diversity Magazine, Spring, 2012). Recruitment pages now feature various ethnic minorities and ‘diversity awareness’ is a quality expected from all employees (see Table 4.3). The website advertises the company’s success in embracing ‘the conversation around diversity and inclusion’. For example, it cites the following facts:
• Hollister is now the number 1 brand amongst 8 to 15-year-old African American youth.
• In 2011, 50 per cent of stores associates are nonwhite, compared to 35 per cent in 2008 and 10 per cent in 2004.
• In 2012, the company was named Best Place to Work for GLBT equality by Human Rights Campaign. (http://www.anfcareers.com/Page/Diversity) Discrimination cases continue, however. In 2009 a sales assistant in London claimed she had been ‘hidden’ in a stockroom because of her prosthetic arm, and in 2008 a Muslim US teenager claimed she was turned down for a sales position because of her hijab (the latter case was upheld by the US Supreme Court in May 2015). In 2013 France’s official human rights body, Le Défenseur des Droits, investigated the company over discriminatory hiring based on physical appearance, claiming while hiring for looks may be justified for models, the company were using their ‘models’ as sales staff.
With recruitment targeting of job candidates by managers, it is hard to see how any kind of diversity targets for recruitment can be monitored. Managers are clearly encouraged to make decisions based on ‘image norms’ as part of all selection methods, including interviews, as well as in the informal approaches to customers with ‘the look’. In a 2006 interview for Salon.com, Mike Jeffries, CEO, made the following statement about their corporate strategy: Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.
Questions
1 How are each of the perspectives of selection – psychometric, best fit, interactive decision process and discourse – represented in the hiring process for (a) Managers in Training and (b) sales assistants (both ‘models’ and ‘part-time impact’ roles)?
2 Evaluate the selection process with respect to the four criteria of psychometric quality described at the start of the chapter. Can falling short on any of these criteria, in your opinion, be justified? Design a selection process for the sales associate roles in Table 4.3 using psychometric principles (start with a job analysis).
3 Identify as many examples of ‘selection as an interactive decision process’ in this case as you can. Should these processes be eliminated on the grounds they discriminate against particular groups, or can a case be made for retaining all or some of them?
4 How is the ‘selection as discourse’ perspective reflected in this case? 5 Why have the legal challenges to the company’s hiring approach not eliminated the problem?
