A guide to using a human-centered audition process for hiring.

1. AUDITION HIRING
HANDBOOK
UPDATED JUNE 2015

2. 2AUDITION HIRING HANDBOOK
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The Audition Hiring process helps us meet the following goals as a Technology team:
Encourages SPEED by promoting team alignment on decisions, collaborative work, and responsive follow
up with candidates in a competitive job market.
Provides a CONSISTENT, rigorous, and engaging hiring experience for all Technology candidates.
Ensures TEAMS are directly involved in the hiring process so they can represent the team dynamics and
needs, and be part of the hiring decision.
Offer a transparent and honest immersion experience for each candidate and team to ensure skill and
CULTURE FIT.
Helps set a reputation and DIFFERENTIATION for Technology that mirrors the excellence and service-
oriented reputation of our stores.
TRADITIONAL HIRING PROCESS
Individual Decisions
Skills Discussed (interview)
Unsure about Culture/Team Fit
More Unknowns
Wavering, Back and Forth
Firing Squad of Interviews
AUDITION HIRING PROCESS
Team Decisions
Skills Demonstrated (activities)
Culture/Team Fit Determined
Full Transparency
Speed to Decisions
Smaller Group/Pair Activities
Goals of Audition Hiring:
Benefits of Audition Hiring:
AUDITION HIRING
Audition Hiring is applicable to any candidate, full-time hires to internal transfers.

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Overview of Audition Hiring Stages
1. PRE-SCREEN
2. SCREEN
3. PRE-AUDITION
4. AUDITION
(resume review)
(interview)
(activity)
(day on-the-job)
Goal: Review résumé to see if the candidate fits the role criteria.
Often done by Talent Acquisition via phone; can also be done by 1-2 team members.
Sometimes there will be a “tech screen” conducted by the hiring manager to vet technical skills.
Goal: Find out if a candidate is a basic culture and skills fit through a more traditional 1-hour interview
and résumé review.
Can be done over the phone or in-person (especially if people skills are critical)
Ideal team is hiring manager + 1-2 core team members.
Start off with some basic questions to ensure that the résumé is accurate.
Goal: Evaluate the candidate’s skill for the job through asking them to do an activity that closely resembles
the job.
The Pre-Audition is one of the most flexible portions of the process, tailored to team’s work and style.
Send the candidate a set of pre-work related to what role they will be doing.
Bring them on-site for 1-2 hours to present their results and process.
For technical roles you can speed up the process by combining the phone screen with remote pairing.
Goal: Evaluate the culture and skill fit more deeply by working alongside the candidate for a half day or
full day designed to resemble typical activities they’d experience on the job - a “day in the life”
The audition day is an opportunity for the candidate and the team to evaluate each other for skill and
culture fit by going through a “typical” workday for the team. It should resemble the job, but not be
the actual activities of the job. Auditions involve setting the team up as an “audition pool,” scheduling
the day, and preparing the candidate – which will be explained next!
These steps can be combined to best suit the work your team is evaluating. Some teams combine
the “pre-audition” with the “screen” or “audition” steps. The “audition” can be a half or full day.

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Pre-Screen & Screen
Pre-Audition & Audition
For detailed Pre-Screening and Screening steps, please refer to the corporate hiring materials available
on Nordnet: https://intranet/depts/hrat/Pages/default.aspx
The rest of this booklet provides information on how to set up a Pre-Audition and an Audition, and will
cover the following topics:
1. Defining a Hiring Checklist
2. Setting up an Audition Pool
3. Good Questions & Activities
4. Scheduling the Audition Day & Checkpoints
5. Candidate Prep
Appendix: Sample Questions, NorDNA, Additional Resources
1. DEFINING A HIRING CHECKLIST
The hiring checklist helps focus the team on the critical job functions, team fit, and cultural fit for
Nordstrom in general. It can be used to generate questions and activities for the audition process, as well
as evaluate candidates (especially if there’s a tough call between people).
NORDNA TRAITS
Accountable
Passionate
Action-Oriented
Collaborative
Curious
Courageous
Skilled
Qualities that are
important for
someone to fit
into your team as a
person
Skills that everyone
on the team shares
Skills that are
specific to this role
TEAM CULTURE TEAM SKILLS ROLE-SPECIFIC SKILLS

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3. QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Audition Activities
If there are multiple applicants for a single position, they must all have the same audition activity or
challenge, but not necessarily the same schedule.
• Use a problem or recent project your team is working on. You can mask the details enough to make it
generic and not Nordstrom-specific.
• Ask the applicant to design something on their own time using data or requirements supplied to
them.
• For a role such as PM or BA consider an exercise where the candidate presents their work to an
audience of stakeholders (i.e. the team) and goes through the process of eliciting requirements, etc.
The best way to get accurate info during an audition is to define specific questions and activities
by looking at the hiring checklist and seeing what questions you can ask to determine whether the
candidate has those traits.
2. SETTING UP AN AUDITION POOL
What Is It?
The audition pool ‘runs’ the audition. The hiring manager is a guide throughout the day. This ensures that
each expert on the team has an opportunity to learn if the candidate has the necessary skills for the role.
Who’s In It?
Select people who can evaluate and represent the different areas of that person’s role – which likely
includes people on your team and also people on partner teams.
How Do I Start It?
Explain the audition process to the team and block the audition day or specific times on their calendars
to reserve their time.
For general questions, ask open-ended questions
in the style of “behavioral interviewing,” and ask
the same questions to each candidate.
✔ Tell me about a recent project you did that
resembles this work, and what role you played on
the project.
✔ What is your superpower? What skills do you
like to have on a team to complement your
strengths?
✔ What about this role excites you? What do you
see as a challenge?
Never ask about (and steer the conversation
away from) these topics as they can be
considered a cause for discrimination:
✘ Marital or Family Status
✘ Ethnic or Racial Background
✘ National Background or Birthplace
✘ Age
✘ Sexual Orientation
✘ Religious Preference
✘ Health, Disability, or Medical History
Information
For more question samples, see the Appendix at the end of this document.

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4. SCHEDULING THE AUDITION DAY
Scheduling Activities
Scheduling a group of busy people to be in the right places at the right time is tricky. If there is a great
organizer on the team, this might be a place they can help out the hiring manager! The meeting times
should be scheduled with the location in Outlook as not every team member will be needed for each
activity.
Morning Have the candidate come to the 5th floor greeting area, rather than the lobby.
Write a welcome message on the white board with the audition pool member names.
Provide a small goodie bag with a snack or candy, bottled water, or a ‘Starbucks on us’ card.
Provide a loaner card so the candidate can take a break downstairs or on the 17th floor.
Lunch Make lunch about lunch and not about work questions. It’s a long day for the candidate and
this is a nice time to take a break.
End of Day Remember to get their parking validated on the 5th floor with HR.
Checkpoints
Checkpoints are 15-minute huddles where the team assesses the progress that has occurred in each step
of the audition (and the candidate gets a break). These occur at least a couple of times during the day.
Audition Hiring relies on the consensus of the team. To have input into the hiring of a candidate, all team
members must attend all checkpoints to communicate and receive feedback.
Rather than committing to a full day with a candidate who is not the right fit, checkpoints give the team
an opportunity to vote together on whether there is value in moving forward with the rest of the day.
This can give valuable time back to the team and the candidate.
Checkpoints go both ways. They are also an opportunity for the candidate to bow out of the process.
The team meets in a private room and reviews the Hiring Checklist to decide whether to continue with
the audition. Any highlights or concerns should be mentioned. We recommend using “roman voting”
(thumbs up or down) to decide whether to move forward with the day.
• An ‘undecided’ vote means you need to learn something more to be certain one way or another.
• A ‘no’ vote may mean there is still more to learn, or that an issue has been identified that means that
candidate is not the right fit.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Questions and activities can be designed to protect private information. If confidential information
needs to be revealed the candidate can fill out a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

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When anticipating an offer:
• Touch base with Recruiting as early as possible
- they may have paperwork ready by the time
the team presents an offer.
• Ensure the team is in the room when giving
the good news to the candidate to show their
unanimous support.
When declining a candidate:
• Be honest and give ‘just enough’ feedback to
show we care and take the process seriously.
• Support the Hiring Manager by having another
member of the team present with them when
the message is delivered.
• Have logistics such as parking reimbursement
already arranged.
IF YOU ARE USING CHECKPOINTS...
You MUST explain the process to the candidate. You must clearly communicate to the candidate
that they may not be on-site for the full day based on how much we need to learn about them
throughout the day. Practice tactful honesty and your candidate will respect you for it.
A way to phrase the checkpoint process:
“We’ll take some recesses throughout the day to discuss what we’ve learned and what more we’d like
to learn about you. We respect that you are also learning about us, so we welcome you to use the time
the same way, or to take a break and relax. Would you mind meeting us back here in 15 minutes?”
The unique structure of an audition warrants a little explanation up front so the candidate can be
prepared before arriving. Let the candidate know:
Why We Do Auditions
• The audition day is an opportunity for the team and the candidate to evaluate each other by spending
a day together that closely resembles the job.
• We use this process to be able to evaluate candidates on skills and culture fit, and to enable a speedy
hire that the entire team agrees on.
What the Day Looks Like
• There will be a variety of activities with different people from the core team and possibly business
partners.
• There will be “checkpoints” at stages in the day to assess whether we want to move forward. This
saves everyone time if the fit is not appropriate earlier in the day. This also allows the candidate to
take breaks.
5. CANDIDATE PREP

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Time Participants /
Invitees
Activity Description
9:00-9:45 Hiring Manager +
Team Member
with soft skills
+ Candidate
Coffee and
Tour
Warm up the candidate / set context for the day regarding
checkpoints.
9:45-10:00 Entire Team +
Candidate
Standup Give candidate visibility into team culture and process.
Introduce them directly to the Audition Pool immediately
after standup if needed.
10:00-11:15 Audition Pool +
Candidate
Audition
Assignment
Candidate prepares and presents audition assignment, or
does a paired activity with members from the audition pool
(1:1 or 1:2).
11:15-11:30 Audition Pool Only Checkpoint Team huddles together and goes through hiring checklist
to complete the roman voting process before a decision to
progress with the day.
11:30-1:00 Some Audition
Pool + Candidate
Lunch Opportunity for team and candidate to get to know each
other and assess team fit. Some Audition Pool may opt out
based on work load.
1:00-2:00 Individuals from
Audition Pool +
Candidate
Pairing
activities or 1:1
discussions
Team members who are working closely with the individual
may want to dig in deeper on certain questions or topics
that have come up in the day, or have a prepared exercise
to go through. Hiring manager may want 1:1 time with the
candidate.
2:00-2:15 Audition Pool only Checkpoint Team huddles together and goes through hiring checklist
to complete the roman voting process before a decision to
progress with the day.
2:15-3:00 Audition Pool +
Candidate
Q+A Cultural Fit assessment, candidate Q+A. Most of the skill fit
assessment should be complete by this time but there may
be some bleed over.
3:00-3:15 Audition Pool only Checkpoint Final Team huddle to complete the roman voting process
before a decision to move forward with a job offer.
3:15-3:30 Audition Pool +
Any Stakeholders
+Candidate
Job Offer
(formal or
informal)
The team should be in the room for the initial news of
presenting the good news to the candidate. The details can
be left to the Hiring Manager. Ideally, all paperwork has
been put in motion ahead of time. If not, a verbal offer can
be made with a follow-up made the next day.
Audition Day Sample - Full Day

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Time Participants /
Invitees
Activity Description
9:00-9:30 Hiring Manager +
Team Member
with soft skills
+ Candidate
Meet & Greet
Q&A
Warm up the candidate / set context for the day
regarding checkpoints.
9:30-10am Team Member +
Candidate
Assignment is
introduced to
candidate.
Candidate is introduced to a quick assignment with a
core team member.
10-10:45am Team Member +
Candidate + Core
Team
Candidate
facilitates
assignment
with team
Candidate shares assignment with team. Shows team
facilitation skills.
10:45-11am Team Checkpoint Team huddles together and goes through hiring
checklist to complete the roman voting process before
a decision to progress with the day.
11am-12pm Candidate + Core
Team
Technical
Session
Learn about more specific technical capabilities.
12-12:15pm Team Checkpoint
12:15-1:15pm Team + Candidate Lunch
1:15-1:30pm Team Final
Checkpoint
Final Team huddle to complete the roman voting
process before a decision to move forward with a job
offer.
1:30-1:45pm Hiring Manager +
Candidate
Next Steps Next steps communicated to candidate.
Audition Day Sample - Half Day

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ROLE
• What attracted you to the this role?
• What interested you about Nordstrom?
• If we’re sitting here a year from now celebrating what a great twelve months it’s been for you in this
role, what did we achieve together?
WORK EXPERIENCE
• Can you tell us a bit about what you do right now?
• Please walk us through a recent past project. What role did you play on that project? What was the
outcome?
• Describe a project or idea that was implemented primarily because of your efforts. What was your
role? What was the outcome?
• How would you describe the impact you’ve had in your last work role? Prior to that?
• What tools do you use for your role?
• Which stage of projects do you like best and why? Which stage do you dislike and why?
SKILLS
• How would you describe your deep (specialties) vs. broad skills (like T-shape)?
• What’s your superpower?
• What skills do you like to have on a team to complement your skills?
CULTURE FIT
• What type of work environment do you thrive in? Not thrive in?
• What does your ideal team look like?
• What do you need in the workplace to be successful?
SPECIFIC TOPIC QUESTIONS
There are many more questions by topic located on the Confluence page for Audition Hiring.
Change Tell us about a recent experience where you navigated change in the workplace.
Communication What methods do you use to keep others in the loop and check in with the team?
Improvement Describe a time when you made a suggestion to improve work in your organization.
Innovation How do you come up with new ideas (probe on brainstorming)?
Leadership How would you describe your leadership skills?
Problem-Solving Tell us about a problem you solved in a unique or unusual way - process, outcomes
Relationships What are the key ingredients in guiding/maintaining business relationships? Example
APPENDIX: Sample Interview Questions
INTERVIEW TIPS
• ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS
• FOLLOW UP - ASK WHY, FOR SPECIFIC EXAMPLES
• BE CURIOUS; CURB ASSUMPTIONS
• ALLOW FOR PAUSES

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APPENDIX: NorDNA
Creating the most inspiring workplace where we enable
talented people to provide amazing customer experiences.
NorDNA resources are available on the People Lab website:
http://nordstromtechnologypeoplelab.com/programs/nordna/

12. 12AUDITION HIRING HANDBOOK
We’re in the business of making our
customers feel great. To achieve
this, developing, retaining, and
attracting talented people is a top
priority. At the end of the day, it is
our people that power our services,
deliver great experiences to our
customers, and create long-term
value for our company.
We must be innovative, nimble, and
collaborative to respond to an ever-
changing and competitive retail
environment. We are committed to
offering meaningful challenges and
opportunities to grow. As stewards
of our Nordstrom culture, we accept
nothing less than excellence from
each other. In a changing world,
we’ll never forget our heritage of
the shoe salesperson, on one knee,
assisting one customer at a time.
Bring deep expertise in at least one or more areas, with breadth
across other areas (referred to as a “T-shaped” person). Others are
excited to work with you because your presence and capabilities
gives confidence to those around you.
SKILLED
Demonstrate character and integrity. Be reliable and take pride in
delivering results. Follow through on commitments while always
striving to surprise and delight.
ACCOUNTABLE
Driven to make real impact through your skills and contributions.
Model high engagement whether you are introverted or
extroverted.
PASSIONATE
PEOPLE
Don’t wait for permission; give appropriate thought and use good
judgment. Bias towards action!
ACTION-ORIENTED
Listen to others and build on their ideas, contribute ideas to groups,
have a “Yes, and” mindset. Create connections and alignment
through your ability to tell the story.
COLLABORATIVE
Ask questions, see the world with a child’s eyes, always seek
inspiration. Do not be afraid to express new ideas, experiment to
learn and combine ideas together in new and radical ways.
CURIOUS
Take smart risks and embrace “Fail Forward” moments as
opportunities to learn. Share your ideas - even the wild and crazy
ones - with others.
COURAGEOUS
APPENDIX: NorDNA

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APPENDIX: Additional Resources
CORPORATE-WIDE HIRING & ONBOARDING PROCESS & TOOLS
For information about the entire hiring and onboarding process, see our resources on Nordnet:
https://intranet/depts/hrat/Pages/default.aspx
MORE ABOUT AUDITION HIRING
For more information about this process including sample schedules, activities, and additional interview
questions, check out the “Audition Hiring, People Lab” page on Confluence:
https://confluence.nordstrom.net/display/PL/Audition+Based+Hiring