Whether you have just begun your own franchise or you have been a franchisee for many years, you will face the same problems when it comes to recruiting as these aren’t specific to franchising - they are problems that every organisation will face. Unless you’re running a single van based franchise or a similar franchise where you don’t need additional colleagues, you need to ensure that when you are recruiting a new employee, you do your due diligence, if not you could be hiring somebody that will be a detriment to your business.

What to do before you post the job advert

This is often the area that gets overlooked as most employers want to get recruiting as soon as they realise a new colleague is needed, however, you should be spending a significant amount of time here to ensure you get the best possible candidates once the advert goes live.

Great name in the industry

You only have to look as far as Google to understand this point; have you ever head someone say that “Google is a great place to work”? Well, a lot of people have, that’s why they receive around 3,000,000 applicants a year.

If you are known as a great employer, your name will soon get about within your industry as many people are on the lookout for somewhere better to work. We’re not suggesting you poach the best talent, but if someone knows that you are a great employer and they get wind of a job opportunity to work with you, then chances are you will receive the best applicants.

Make a Roadmap

If you rush into the recruitment decision before you have planned what exactly their role will involve, where will it lead and what’s the main purpose of it, then you are setting them up to reach a potential dead-end. Create an actionable roadmap so you know exactly what traits and qualifications you need for a perfect candidate and in turn this will also help them out once they get started.

Identifying the best candidate

When you have started the recruitment process, you will obtain a list of people that are viable for your position (once you have eliminated those that don’t meet the minimum requirements) but, how do you move forward and select the best ones?

Ask your colleagues for help

Colleagues can provide more than one benefit to the selection process. When you’re handed a CV which shows an individual’s experience and qualifications, it’s easy to identify if somebody is likely to be technically qualified for the role on paper, but how do you assess if they are going to fit in with your working culture? Referrals from existing colleagues are an easy way to get applicants who are going to fit the ‘culture mould’ as your colleagues aren’t like to recommend someone that doesn’t.

If you involve your colleagues in assessing the applicants, they may notice traits that you didn’t and a second pair of eyes never hurts the situation. They can also help you review all of the applicants; if you receive many, it can be hard to remember exactly how every interview went, but an additional person being present adds that layer of authenticity in measuring the performance of that applicant.

Unique Benefits

Does your franchise have a unique model that offers more flexibility than your competitors? Perhaps you offer Friday afternoons off, or even that every new employee gets a work phone. These types of benefits won’t always be advertised when a job offer goes out, but why not? These benefits could be exactly what somebody is looking for in their new role and without them they may not be interested. This technique won’t help in determining who is going to be successful for your franchise but it will likely increase the number of applicants, so you have better chance of finding the right candidate, with more people to choose from.

Intelligence over Experience

Its and old consensus that somebody with experience will likely perform better than somebody without, but is that really true? For sure experience has merit to it as it demonstrates that a person will likely be able to come in and have more of a chance to hit the ground running, but it has no relation to how they will develop.

If somebody doesn’t have that much experience but can demonstrate their knowledge and passion for the subject is apparent and that they are quick learners, then chances are they will overtake the performance of an experienced candidate after a short time and then go further afterwards.

Finding the right employee isn’t enough

You have found the perfect employee so you think the recruitment process is complete; well, it shouldn’t be. After you have found them, they then need some kind of onboarding process, even the best candidates need help when starting at a new business - even similar ones to yours will have different internal procedures.

The other aspect is that you want to set them up to not only succeed in their current role but also make it possible for them to grow into any potential higher roles in the future. The onboarding process should lay out what they need to do, what areas they should look into in their spare time and who they can speak to for advice. If you set this up correctly, your new applicant can hit the ground running, knowing exactly what they have to do, how to do it and, something that’s very important for employee retention, how to progress in this organisation.