Okay, this seems obvious. Of course we all want to hire great employees for our franchise. Who wants to hire average or sub-par employees? Your employees are the face of your company. They have the power to delight your customers and turn them into lifelong evangelists for your business or give customers such a bad experience that they take to social media and review sites and seriously harm your reputation. Additionally, bad employees are expensive! According to Monster.com, the cost of losing a frontline employee ranges from 30% to 150% of that person’s annual earnings.
And yet, knowing all this, many franchisees don’t take the extra time and effort to try and hire great employees. What usually happens is that an employee quits or is terminated, leaving a franchisee or manager with a position to fill. A job post goes up on Craigslist, Monster, or another job site resulting in a flood of applications. The franchisee or manager in charge of hiring wades through all of these applications, picks a few that meet the job qualifications, performs a few interviews, and hires the candidate they liked most out of that bunch.
Most likely, this approach will quickly land you with an average employee to fill the ranks. This may be good enough, but why not try for great instead of average? It will take a little more time and effort, but great employees can seriously buoy your business.
Don’t just hire when you have an opening
If you wait until you have a job opening to hire a new employee for your franchise, you will always feel the pressure to bring someone on as soon as possible. This will lead you to hire the first person who is “good enough” instead of potentially great. You may also skip crucial steps like really studying a candidate’s resume, speaking with references, and performing a thorough interview. You may also keep a new employee on even when he or she shows early issues just because you don’t want to go through the trouble of the hiring process again.
Instead, consider keeping your positions open permanently, allowing you to continually receive resumes from candidates. If your franchise employs a lot of hourly workers, then you probably have regular openings as employees leave. This time, instead of feeling the crunch to fill your schedule with bodies, you can have a lot of great resumes on hand, ready to go when an opening happens.
Focus your advertising
Posting a job on Craigslist, Monster, or other generic job sites is simply asking for a tidal wave of resumes. Instead of throwing open your gates and then trying to filter through the flood to find good candidates, wouldn’t it be great if you could seek out qualified workers? Consider advertising positions on Facebook, which will allow you to target your ads in dramatic ways. For instance, if you own a doggie daycare franchise, you can target your ad to people who are professed dog lovers. Another way to filter candidates is to include a secret word at the end of your ad and ask candidates to include it in the subject line of their email submission. This will allow you to instantly filter out all the candidates who couldn’t be bothered to read to the end of your ad.
Favor candidates who are currently employed
Many employers figure the best way to find an employee is to search for people who don’t have jobs. However, these people may not have jobs for a reason. They may not be reliable or not have a great skill set. Someone who is currently employed already has some on-the-job experience and has proven themselves to be a decent worker. Consider targeting candidates who are currently employed in your industry. If the candidate has several years of experience with the same company, this indicates that they have the potential to be a steady, long-term employee.
Try to accommodate these candidates. This may mean conducting interviews after business hours or refraining from contacting their current boss.
Using these tips, you can increase your chances of hiring great employees for your franchise, instead of making due with average employees. Great employees make you a better boss and help your profits soar!