A Franchise Expert’s Guide to Hiring Franchise Employees

Let’s talk about hiring franchise employees. Establishing a profitable franchise doesn’t happen by chance. You have to carefully follow the proven business model. Recruiting is an essential component.

Here are three critical tips for hiring franchise employees.

1. Learn Recruitment Best Practices

Forget gut instincts. You can’t wing it when it comes to hiring. Learn from experts. Avoid recruiting mistakes that could threaten the survival of your business.

Your franchisor probably has resources to help you. Read the hiring information carefully. If they don’t have hiring resources, consult other franchise owners. Take advantage of the collective wisdom of fellow franchisees who have built successful franchise businesses.

A common reason franchises fail is because the franchisee doesn’t follow the formula. Recruiting best practices are part of the formula!

Pay special attention to your manager position. This is your most important employee. You can’t operate without an effective manager. Fill this position first with a seasoned manager. Your manager can then help you evaluate applicants for the other positions.

All of your employees should have experience with your type of business. If you can find people who have worked at your specific franchise, you will save time on training.

Offer a wage a bit higher than your competition if necessary. One experienced, competent employee can often do the work of two entry-level employees.

For guidance on every aspect of hiring, consult our How To Hire Your Next Employee series. It includes articles and graphics to help any franchise owner find the employees who will ensure success.

2. Educate Yourself on EEOC Laws

In 2018, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received over 76,000 charges of employer discrimination. Many of these involved franchises. (Note that this doesn’t include any state or local cases.)

For example, here is a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee who was fined $30,000 for discrimination.

EEOC laws are periodically updated on both the federal and local level. Don’t assume the franchisor’s compliance guidelines are current.

In addition to understanding the laws yourself, make sure your manager and anyone else on your hiring team agree to follow them. Include them in your employee handbook and use e-signature for verification.

In the first section, we mentioned structured interviewing. Creating a compliant script will help you avoid illegal interview questions.

3. Use Advanced Recruiting Technology

An applicant tracking system (ATS) automates franchise hiring processes. It’s never been more important to leverage technology. You simply can’t compete for the top franchise talent in the current labor market.

If your franchisor offers an applicant tracking system—use it. If not, get your own. You’ve got to staff an entire business before you can start turning a profit. You need the best tech tools. They will allow you to move multiple applicants through the process simultaneously.

Onboarding software is also important for franchise employees. The first few weeks and months are critical for long-term success.

Turnkey Software for Effective Franchise Hiring

Let’s elaborate on Tip 3: Use Advanced Recruiting Technology.

You’ve invested a lot of money. You want to get up and running quickly. Turnkey business software saves time for franchise owners while providing all the tools you need.

Franchise Employee Applicant Tracking

ApplicantStack is the applicant tracking system of choice for franchises. It’s ideally suited to staff an entire franchise business as quickly as possible.

• Food and Beverage
• Home Service
• Fitness Centers
• Salons
• Pet Stores
• Real Estate
• Automotive
• Financial/Insurance
• Healthcare

Let’s explore the ApplicantStack tools that streamline hiring franchise employees.

Where To Advertise Franchise Positions

Job applicants search for franchise jobs on Monster, Indeed, Craigslist and college job boards. Franchise owners also find job applicants on company social media sites and the careers page of their website. Depending on the type of franchise, there are also niche sites that target specific industries.

It’s tedious and time consuming to post one job position to each site manually. Posting all the positions for an entire franchise launch is exponentially more time consuming. As a new franchise owner, you have to staff your entire company while dealing with all the other stuff. Like learning how to run the business.

Without ApplicantStack, you have to remember your account passwords for each job board. After taking the time to post to each site manually, you start receiving applications and resumes from the various sites. Without applicant tracking software, it’s an organizational nightmare.

Job Description Templates

ApplicantStack works like a busy franchisee’s capable hiring assistant. Create job description templates for each position. ApplicantStack stores them for you so they are ready when you need them. If you have multiple locations, you can create a template for each one. Include the geographic keywords to attract online searchers. ApplicantStack’s job posting tools make franchise hiring a breeze.

Single Signon Job Posting

You will need to post to multiple job boards simultaneously to build your team. With ApplicantStack, you can post to several job boards using a single signon.  Remember, you are competing with the other businesses in your area. You need a large pool of applicants because you will filter many of them out. That leads us to our next section.

Pre-Screening Questionnaires

Let’s talk about the importance of filtering. ApplicantStack automates this process as well. Create custom screening questionnaires in ApplicantStack. Applicants complete the questionnaire online when they apply. This quickly isolates the candidates who have the necessary experience, skills, and availability.

This ensures that you won’t waste time reviewing an application for a candidate who can’t work the necessary shifts. Pinpoint necessary job skills or certifications. Don’t take time away from marketing your business to review an application for a high school student who is too young to serve alcohol, for example.

Franchise experts use automatic filtering because there is no better way to find qualified employees quickly. With manual filtering, you might have to postpone your grand opening because you haven’t staffed your business in time.

Franchise Job Applicants Prefer Texting

ApplicantStack allows you to communicate with job applicants by email or text messaging. With the increasing popularity of texting, franchise experts take advantage of this immediate, highly personalized channel of communication. It not only speeds up the hiring process, it demonstrates that your business is on the cutting edge of technology.

Franchise Workforce Management

Once you’ve hired your team, you need to manage them efficiently with advanced software. Employee time and attendance software handles shift clock in/out, franchise employee scheduling, and PTO tracking.

TimeWorksExpress is a turnkey employee timekeeping system from SwipeClock. It only takes a couple minutes to create an account. Enter your franchise team in a few minutes. They can start clocking in and out today using a smartphone, work computer, or tablet.

Franchise Employee Self-Service HR

TimeWorksExpress allows franchise employees to check their schedule, request time off, and monitor their PTO balances. One of the keys to franchise employee job satisfaction is hassle-free Human Resources.

Give Your Manager Advanced Tools

Franchise managers love TimeWorksExpress as well. They can approve time cards and time off requests from their smartphone whether or not they are at work.

Previously, we discussed how critical it is to have a competent manager. Managers need smartly-designed tools to perform well. TimeWorksExpress will help your manager efficiently run your business and your staff, both of which are equally important.

Franchise Shift Scheduling

Franchise shift scheduling can get complicated. Many businesses need multiple part-time shifts of varying lengths. Spreadsheets don’t cut it anymore. TimeWorksExpress can handle complex team scheduling with employee shift drag-and-drop and schedule templates.

ApplicantStack and TimeWorksExpress

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or spend hours researching software. ApplicantStack and TimeWorksExpress will help you find quality, experienced employees for your team and manage them efficiently going forward. (Click the links to try either product for free.)

Franchise experts know this is the key to recouping your investment and achieving long-term profitability.