Ten Recruiting Tips for Franchise Owners

Maybe you are a new franchise owner, eagerly anticipating your first customers in your new store. Or maybe you are an experienced veteran, with a long history of successfully managing multiple outlets. Regardless of your experience level, recruiting will always be a challenge. 

Below are ten practical tips that can help any franchise owner strengthen their recruiting. 

Ten Recruiting Tips for Franchise Owners

1. Foster Company Culture

A study by hiring giant Glassdoor found that 56% of workers ranked a strong company culture as more important than salary! Create an environment that is respectful and supportive for the employees. Understand that many of your employees are new to the workplace, and need to be in an atmosphere that will encourage longevity. Fostering a supportive and respectful company culture is important for recruiting because employees talk and the same Glassdoor study found that 77% of workers take what they hear about company culture into account when deciding to apply for a new role.

HiringThing Pro Tip: Encourage employees you know have had a good experience at your organization to leave workplace reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

2. Utilizing Corporate Resources

Look for advice from headquarters about recruitment issues, or seek advice from fellow franchisees about job boards that proved effective, or job descriptions that delivered a good applicant response. Franchisors are tied to your success, so use the available tools at your disposal!

3. Set up an Employee Referral System

You need an employee referral system! Employee referrals are 4x more likely to be hired and 82% of employers rated employee referrals as the top candidate sourcing option in terms of ROI. Employee referral systems are easy to set up. Just make sure to find a way to reward or incentivize your current employees who are doing the referring.

4. Recruit from Similar Businesses

70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent, workers who are gainfully employed but open to the idea of a better offer. If you know the compensation packages of your competition and can offer a more attractive offering, look for ways to recruit those workers. 

5. Automate the Hiring Process

There are effective and affordable software programs that can help in areas like applicant screening questions, assessments, and ratings. These programs will help save you time and money in developing an effective recruiting process.

HiringThing's branded hiring software not only automates your hiring process but offers applicant pooling for franchises with multiple locations, and our rollout package helps franchisors with joint liability. Chat with one of our business development specialists to see how we can help you transform your franchise's hiring!

6. On-the Job Interviews

Franchise work isn't for everyone. On-the-job interviews can provide the opportunity to decide whether a candidate's skillsets and potential align with your organization's needs. 

7. Showcase Growth Opportunities

Hourly workers are twice as interested in earning a promotion at their current employer due to experience or merit versus changing jobs to get promoted—use that to your advantage and highlight growth opportunities during the interview process!

HiringThing Pro Tip: Highlight growth opportunities in your job postings, as well as sharing current in-house promotion success stories on your website or social media channels.

8. Incentivize Job Seekers

Incentivizing job seekers is becoming more and more common, especially in the franchise and hospitality spaces. It may not be your first choice, but if all your competitors are offering sign-on bonuses, you may need to as well. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Remember that job seekers obviously value material or monetary rewards or incentives but also value company culture. You can also incentivize job seekers (and current employees) with transparency or the autonomy to self-schedule shifts. Be creative!

9. Craft a Strong Employer Brand

Your employer brand is what employees and job seekers say about your company. Consistent messaging across your job postings, company website, social media, and interview process contributes to your employer brand. 

HiringThing Pro Tip: Look to your corporate offices or what other franchises are doing when it comes to crafting your messaging, while still adhering to larger brand guidelines.

10. Utilize Social Media

In addition to referrals, franchise resources, and job boards, make sure to utilize your social media accounts to effectively advertise your employment opportunities—79% of job seekers use social media as part of their job search. 

Jumpstart Your Recruiting

Want additional statistics about how well employee referral programs work? What about tips for writing job postings that get noticed? Or additional ways to take your hiring to the next level? Well then, we’ve created The HiringThing Guide to Increasing Your Applicant Tracking just for you.

About HiringThing

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 HR technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the HiringThing HR platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.