Increase Your Franchise’s Applicant Traffic

Hiring Is a Challenge for Franchises Today

With the applicant pool continuing to shrink for most businesses, recruiting is a top concern across industries. The food and hospitality industries, including franchises, are especially struggling—franchises like Jimmy John’s offer signing bonuses, and McDonald’s recently announced the option for emergency childcare benefits to attract more applicants.

While it’s easy to chalk this struggle up to health concerns and unemployment checks, franchises, often staffed by entry-level employees, were struggling pre-pandemic—only 10% of restaurant companies reported fully-staffed kitchens in the winter of 2019. The prevalence of the gig economy, wage debates, and the shrinking number of teens in the workforce are factors. The current economy simply exacerbates this problem. 

It’s the perfect time for stretched-thin franchisors to rethink hiring strategies to ensure:

• You are marketing to what today’s candidates want in a job.
• You are making the job-application process easy.
• Your hiring process is candidate-centric.  

While the strategic move right now is to do everything you can to help your franchisees attract and engage candidates and hire them quickly, reimagining your hiring process will keep your franchise competitive and nimble moving forward. We may be returning to “the way things were,” but “the way things we were” could use an update. 

Franchise Hiring Software Can Help

We may be biased here (full transparency: we definitely are), but a branded applicant traffic system (ATS) designed for franchises is the first step in rethinking your hiring strategy. Branded hiring software allows you to customize your workflows or integrate them into your existing systems. Additionally, good franchise hiring software can:

• Streamline the hiring process.
• Save time by keeping candidates organized.
• Strengthen the job applicant experience. 
• Ensure your hiring process strengthens your brand. 
• Make it easy for franchisees with multiple locations to use one platform to keep their hiring organized. 

 86.1% of hiring managers say using an ATS has increased the speed at which they hire.

Tips for Engaging and Increasing Your Franchise’s Job Candidates

• Revisit Your Job Requirements
• Remove Barriers
• Make Job Applications Mobile-Friendly
• Advertise Open Positions On Social Media
• Advertise Open Positions In-Store (When Applicable)
• Make Reviewing Applications Quickly a Best Practice
• Utilize Remote Interviews
• Take Advantage of Applicant Pooling

HiringThing’s ATS has transformed the hiring process for many franchises. Below are our expert tips for rethinking your strategy, engaging candidates, increasing applicant traffic, and hiring your next batch of great employees for your franchise. 

Revisit Your Job Requirements

A recent analysis of more than 1 million applicants found more than 300,000 quit their job application mid-way. 20% of them did so when asked for previous work experience. Is previous work experience relevant for your entry-level positions? Removing unnecessary friction points can stop candidates from dropping out of the application process.

HiringThing Pro Tip: Focus on transferable or soft skills in your job postings. Many great candidates have what it takes to be stellar employees (strong communication, adaptability, or active listening skills) even without experience. Figure out what combination of skills will help your franchise thrive.

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Remove Barriers

According to CareerBuilder, 60% of job seekers quit applications because of length or complexity. Are your forms too long? Do you ask too many questions? Are you asking candidates to take more than 15-minutes out of their day to apply? All of these are barriers for today’s job seekers. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Go through your application process. What’s necessary? What’s superfluous? What barriers made you want to quit? 

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Make Your Job Applications Mobile-Friendly

75% of hourly job seekers use their phones to search for and apply to jobs—you must make your job postings and applications mobile-friendly. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Give franchisees the ability to provide their employees with a mobile-friendly link or QR code to share with their networks—employees recruited through referrals produce 25% more profit for their companies than other new hires and are 55% faster to hire (HiringThing can help your franchisees build a referral program).

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Advertise Open Positions on Social Media

79% of job seekers look for work and 73% of job seekers 18-34 found their last position on social media. It doesn’t cut it to only post to job boards anymore. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Have a video clip explaining the role or celebrating your company culture accompany your social media post. Social posts with video get the most engagement—tweets with video, for example, get 10x more engagement than tweets with no video content (HiringThing makes it easy to post your jobs to social media).

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Advertise Open Positions In-Store When Applicable

You want employees that are passionate about your brand, right? What better way to find enthusiastic brand advocates than your current customer base? Convert loyal customers into loyal employees. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Treat every job candidate as a current customer you want to keep engaged and delighted. 91% of employers report finding that the candidate experience influences future consumer-purchasing decisions. 

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Make Reviewing Applications Quickly a Best Practice 

In today’s tight labor market, responding to applications quickly is imperative. Job seekers typically apply to multiple positions in a single session—your best candidates will be off the market fast.

HiringThing Pro Tip: Encourage franchisees to check their new applications twice a day to ensure they can move quickly and nimbly on top candidates. Franchise hiring software like an ATS can make this a convenient, feasible part of your franchise’s workflow, rather than a drain on time and resources. 

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Utilize Remote Interviews

We’ve talked about removing barriers, and a barrier for many job candidates is making the time to come in for an in-person interview. Utilize remote interviewing via video conferencing or phone for your initial interview, then bring candidates in for the final interview if you deem it necessary. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Give candidates a choice between a phone or video interview—let them pick the technology they find most comfortable.

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Take Advantage of Applicant Pooling

Look for franchise hiring software with applicant pooling. Applicant pooling puts all applicants who’ve applied at a specific location into the running for a position at any location the franchisee oversees. Applicant pooling is a great opportunity for franchisees overseeing multiple locations! 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Have franchisees call out that one application works for all applicable franchise locations in the job description. Candidates will appreciate this convenience.

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Make HiringThing Your Franchise ATS

HiringThing is a modern recruiting and employee onboarding platform as a service that creates seamless talent experiences. Our white label solutions and open API enable technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.