A customer on the screen: how we chose sales staff from Azerbaijan by language, not by CV

01 / Video call

A burnt-out light bulb in front of the camera and a task no CV reveals

Tuesday, half past ten in Baku, half past nine in Kyiv. In our partner's office near Ganjlik metro station, Leyla sits in front of a laptop with her hands in her lap so no one can see they are shaking slightly. On the screen is Elchin, our manager for workers from Azerbaijan. For five minutes he has been asking her about her work in Azerbaijani, and now he switches to Russian and holds a burnt-out light bulb with a small screw base up to the camera. He is playing a customer: the old one has gone, he needs the same again, and he has no idea what it is called.

Leyla is twenty-six. For four years she sold cosmetics in a shopping centre in Baku, and now she wants to spend a year working in Ukraine: her younger brother has got into university and the family needs money for his studies. She does not try to guess the name. She asks him to bring the bulb closer, asks whether the base is small or large and whether the glass is frosted or clear, and says she will check the shelf now and, if it is not there, call a colleague from the lighting department. It all takes a minute.

In Kyiv, Marta, HR director of the home goods chain, watches that minute in silence. She has switched her camera off so as not to unsettle the candidate. After the call Marta will write to Elchin that this is exactly how it should sound on the shop floor. Leyla will become the first of sixteen people we selected for the chain not by a line in a CV but by the way they talk to a customer.

Everyone lists languages on a CV. You only hear them in a conversation that feels like the real thing.

The request had reached us a week earlier. The chain has nine home goods stores in Kyiv, was opening two more on the left bank and could not fill its shop floor vacancies. Olena, who runs company projects at WORKIN, wrote down the task at the first meeting: twelve sales assistants and four staff for the online order collection point. Marta did not name a country. She named one condition and repeated it twice: these people would talk to customers every day, so for the chain language mattered more than any other line on the application form.

For a sales assistant, conversation is the job. A customer is looking for bathroom paint, asks how two mixer taps differ, wants to return a lamp that did not fit the shade. Order collection staff talk less, but they still talk to everyone: they check the order number, show the goods, ask for a signature. Marta explained that the chain had already hired people who worked conscientiously but froze as soon as a customer spoke to them, which is why she wanted language checked before anyone bought a ticket.

We went through the law at the same meeting. The language of consumer service in Ukraine is the state language, and at a customer's request their personal service may also be provided in another language acceptable to both sides. So we needed people who confidently understand live conversation and who, before departure, would learn the Ukrainian phrases that open and close every exchange on the shop floor.

Who is needed

12 sales assistants and 4 order collection staff

Key requirement

Talking to customers from day one

Service language

State language, basic Ukrainian phrases before departure

Timing

Two new stores opening in two months

02 / Why Azerbaijan

Baku and Ganja: the country we proposed for the language

Kemal, our head of recruitment, set out the options using the criteria we look at every time we choose a country: the language the person will use at work, experience of that particular job, the route against the start date and the reserve of candidates our partners hold. For a warehouse or a factory, experience would come first. Here language came first, and that narrowed the choice straight away.

In Azerbaijan Russian is still widely spoken in the large cities, above all Baku and Ganja. Schools and universities there have Russian-medium classes, and many people use the language at work every day. Shopping centres, supermarkets and retail chains in Baku produce candidates who are already used to customers, and our licensed partner in Baku had previously recruited service staff for us. Citizens of Azerbaijan enter Ukraine without a visa, and the four-to-seven-week visa-free route fitted the opening date.

We compared other options too. From Turkey we bring many experienced people, but few of them speak Russian, and starting two languages from scratch in a few weeks is not realistic. Visa countries were ruled out by the timing. Russian is also common in Central Asian cities, but at that moment our partner in Baku had more people with actual shop floor experience. Olena showed Marta the comparison on a single page, and the chain agreed to Azerbaijan the same day.

03 / Criteria

Eight shop floor situations instead of asking which languages you speak

A question about language checks nothing: "Russian: fluent" appeared on nearly every CV from Baku and Ganja. So before the first interview Elchin asked Marta to collect from her store managers the most frequent customer requests of the past month. There were several dozen, and together we picked eight situations that cover most conversations on the shop floor and at the collection point.

Each situation tests an action, not grammar. Does the person understand the customer the first time? Do they ask politely for clarification if they do not? Can they say a number without a mistake? And do they know the moment to stop improvising and call a senior colleague? That line mattered a great deal to Marta: a sales assistant who confidently gives the wrong answer is worse for a store than one who honestly says they will check.

We made one situation Ukrainian. The customer slowly asks a simple question, and the candidate has to show they have understood the gist, even if they still answer in Russian. That showed us not only the level of Russian but also how easily the person would pick up Ukrainian phrases in the weeks ahead.

• a customer is looking for a light bulb but does not know what it is called;
• an item is not on the shelf, and the candidate needs to suggest a similar one or check stock;
• a customer asks to compare two products by size and price;
• a customer wants to return an item without a receipt, and the candidate needs to explain they will call a senior colleague;
• a collection point customer gives an order number with one digit wrong;
• an elderly customer cannot read the price tag, and it needs to be read out;
• a customer is in a hurry and irritated by the queue;
• a customer slowly asks in Ukrainian where the paint department is.

04 / Selection

Thirty-six calls and a language card for every candidate

The partner advertised the vacancies in Baku, Ganja and Sumgait and collected sixty-one applications in a week. Its recruiters held the first conversation in Azerbaijani: experience with customers, a passport and its validity, readiness to go for a year. Under our contract with the partner, candidates pay nothing for the application or the interview, and this was explained to everyone in that first conversation. Thirty-six people went through to a video call with Elchin.

Each call lasted about twenty minutes. The first five minutes were in Azerbaijani, so the person could settle down and talk about themselves. Then Elchin switched to Russian and became the customer: with the light bulb, with a made-up order number, with a photo of a price tag on the screen. Candidates from Ganja came to the partner's recruiters' office in Ganja, and those who lived far away joined from home, in which case Elchin asked them to sit closer to a window so he could see their face. Marta joined some of the calls with her camera off.

After every call Elchin filled in the candidate card. Instead of the single word "fluent" it has four lines: understands the first time or asks for clarification, says numbers without mistakes, knows when to call a senior colleague, understands a simple question in Ukrainian. Each line has a mark and one sentence explaining why. Below that come customer-facing experience and a short note on how the person copes when a customer is irritated.

Twenty-two candidates got through all eight situations without a failure. Marta approved sixteen, and three more agreed to stay in reserve, knowing they might travel as replacements. Three others spoke well but had no customer-facing experience, and the partner kept them in its database for future projects.

05 / Job titles

The line on the card that decides the job title in the permit

The card was needed for more than approval. A sales assistant and an order collection worker are two different positions, and a work permit is issued for a specific position. If a person is hired as a sales assistant and later moved to the collection point under a different job title, the employer must apply to amend the permit within 30 days, and working on terms other than those in the permit is grounds for revoking it and for a fine. So we decided who would take which position before filing, not after arrival.

The rule was simple and clear to the candidates. Sales assistant roles went to those with a confident mark on the first three lines of the card, because a conversation on the shop floor is long and unpredictable. The collection point went to those who understand well and say numbers without mistakes but still search for words in a long conversation, because there the exchange is shorter and almost always the same. The Ukrainian line did not affect the position: everyone would learn the phrases, and the line simply showed who would need more classes.

Rashid had worked for three years at an online shop's collection point in Ganja. In the order number situation he spotted the wrong digit before Elchin had finished the sentence, and he asked for the collection point himself. Two candidates who had hoped to be sales assistants were disappointed at first. Elchin explained to each of them why the decision had been made, that the job title in the permit would match what they actually did, and that the chain could consider a transfer later by amending the permit properly. Both agreed before signing the information sheet.

06 / Ukrainian phrases

Sixty phrases in four weeks while the permits were processed

There were four weeks between approval and departure: candidates had their passports translated, Nataliia, head of our documents team, put the packages together, and the chain certified the draft employment contracts. We did not want to lose those weeks. Elchin and Marta put together a sixty-phrase phrasebook organised around the same eight situations: greeting and offering help, where to find an item, stock, price and promotions, payment, order collection, returns, calling a senior colleague and saying goodbye.

A colleague from our Kyiv office recorded every phrase in Ukrainian, and next to each one the phrasebook gave an Azerbaijani translation and the stress. Twice a week in the evening Elchin ran video classes in groups of eight. They acted out the same situations as in the interview, but now the answers had to be in Ukrainian. Marta also sent a list of departments and best-selling products in her stores, from paint and filler to mixer taps and extension leads, and we added it to the end of the phrasebook.

Nobody expected people to be fluent in Ukrainian after four weeks. The goal was more modest and more practical: everyone greets the customer, offers help, names the aisle and the price, explains they will call a colleague and says goodbye in Ukrainian, and understands far more than they can say. A week before departure Elchin ran a short phrasebook check with each person and added to the card how many phrases they could say without a prompt. The sixteen scored between forty-two and fifty-eight out of sixty.

The classes were free for candidates, like everything else in the selection. All three reserve candidates studied with the group, so that if a replacement were needed they would travel with the same phrasebook and the same check on their card.

1. 01

   Week 3

   A 60-phrase phrasebook built on eight situations, Ukrainian audio and Azerbaijani translation.

2. 02

   Weeks 3-6

   Classes twice a week in groups of eight, with Elchin playing the customer.

3. 03

   Week 6

   Phrasebook check, number of phrases without a prompt recorded on each card.

4. 04

   Reserve

   Three reserve candidates learn the same phrases with the group.

07 / Documents and travel

Sixteen permits, an honest information sheet and the road through Chisinau

Nataliia collected the chain's documents using the company checklist in the first week. The candidates' packages, with copies of passport pages and a certified Ukrainian translation, photos and a draft employment contract certified by the employer, were filed in week four, and in each one the job title matched the card and the chain's staffing table exactly. A decision on issuing a permit is made within seven working days, and all sixteen work permits were ready in week five.

Every candidate received the information sheet in Russian and Azerbaijani: the store and housing address, the job title and salary from the contract, the contract term, which documents to carry and what the border officers may ask. The sheet had a line that most of our projects do not need: the language of service in the store is the state language, and the chain expects phrases from the phrasebook from the first day. People signed the sheet knowing what they were agreeing to.

Citizens of Azerbaijan enter Ukraine without a visa, but visa-free entry does not give the right to work, so we bought tickets only after the permits were issued. The group arrived in Chisinau and went on by coach to a checkpoint on the Ukrainian border. We checked the rules for Azerbaijani citizens travelling through Moldova before buying tickets, as described on the page about transit through Moldova. Everyone had a folder with their passport, a copy of the permit, the chain's invitation and confirmation of housing, and when asked about the purpose of the trip they answered plainly: work as a sales assistant in Kyiv under an issued permit.

Elchin stayed on the phone until the last of the sixteen had cleared border control. A minibus was waiting on the Ukrainian side, and by that evening everyone was in Kyiv.

1. Week 1

   Request, choice of country, eight shop floor situations, applications from the partner.

2. Week 2

   Thirty-six video calls, candidate cards, approval by the chain.

3. Week 3

   Job titles from the cards, information sheets, passport translations, phrasebook.

4. Weeks 4-5

   16 permits filed and issued, Ukrainian phrase classes.

5. Week 6

   Phrasebook check, tickets, document folders for the border.

6. Week 7

   The group enters Ukraine, housing, contracts, first day on the shop floor.

08 / Handover

Cards in the store managers' hands and the new store's first customer

We arranged housing as part of living support: a hostel near the new stores, whose documents we had checked in advance for address registration and residence permits. The chain signed employment contracts with all sixteen people in the first days, and we filed the copies within the 10-day term. Tax numbers and bank accounts were done within a week, and the temporary residence permit filings started straight away, without waiting for the ninety days of visa-free stay to run down.

Before the opening Marta received the cards for all sixteen people from us. The managers of the two stores could see not only the job titles but also who offers to call a senior colleague on their own and who needs more practice with Ukrainian phrases. How to place people on the shop floor and how to train them on the product range is up to the chain. That is where our part ended: every worker received a guide in Azerbaijani with Elchin's phone number, and we continue to handle the group's documents under migration support.

On opening day Leyla was working in the lighting department. The first person to come up to her was an elderly woman who needed a bulb for an old floor lamp. Leyla greeted her in Ukrainian, offered to help and asked which base it had. She found a bulb with a small base, just like the one Elchin had held up to the camera in Baku six weeks earlier, on the third shelf.

09 / Summary

Sixteen people the chain had heard before they left home

Criteria

Eight situations from the chain's shop floor, one of them in Ukrainian

Selection

61 applications, 36 video calls, 16 approved and 3 in reserve

Card

Four language lines instead of the word "fluent"

Job titles

12 sales assistants and 4 order collection staff, set before filing

Ukrainian

42 to 58 phrases out of 60 without a prompt before departure

Timing

Seven weeks from the request to the first day on the shop floor

Language does not show on a CV, but it is easy to hear in conversation, so we test it the way it will sound on the shop floor. When a chain needs people who can talk to customers from day one, we turn that task into situations, cards and job titles in the permits and take the group all the way to the first customer. The WORKIN replacement guarantee runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are kept, and a replacement comes from the reserve of the same selection, with language already checked and phrases already learned. How we check language at interview for a construction crew is covered in the scenario on Turkish installers with bilingual team leads, and how we check skills in Baku before filing for permits in the scenario on a cooking trial for a hotel chain. The whole journey is described on How it works, and what falls on the chain as the employer on the page on employer duties. More on the pages on workers for retail, recruitment and workers from Azerbaijan.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers