7 TOP RECRUITING TIPS
Employees will be a key asset to your franchise.
As a franchise owner, it is important for you to be aware that one of the most important assets of your business is your team. Recruiting great employees ensures your business will be strong, efficient, productive and profitable.
On top of all that, your business is likely to become known for its great customer service.
This means it is absolutely crucial for business success to get recruitment right. Here are seven top tips to ensure you recruit great talent for your business..
1. CLARIFY YOUR NEED
All good recruitment starts with outlining how you want your business represented in terms of brand and values. Be crystal clear about the type of person you want in your business, and articulate that in behavioural terms.
By scoping a role well, you can attract the right candidates and prevent major headaches down the track, such as performance issues. Start by creating a role outline and success profile. This includes outlining:
• The purpose of the role
• The key major tasks of the role
• The level of autonomy and decision
making required
• The behavioural competencies, skill sets, experience, knowledge and qualifications needed for success in the role.
All too often at The HR Experts, clients present a shopping list of requirements that are unrealistic or not necessary for the role. From a legal and pragmatic perspective, it is important to distinguish between minimum requirement and the ideal. We all love to find ideal candidates, but often they just don’t exist.
Our golden rule is to recruit for fit first. Training can add skills later. It is far easier to teach someone skills than to ask them to change ingrained behaviours and personality traits.
By setting up a robust recruitment process, you are putting in the foundations for a successful franchise business. Remember, employees rank highly among your most
important assets.
2. SORT YOUR PROCESS
Before advertising for staff members, there are several elements you need to have in place that are crucial to the recruitment process:
• A clear role outline and success profile
• A well-designed and well-written job
advertisement
• An understanding of any legislation and awards relevant to the job (particularly pertinent in fast food and retail, especially with new amendments to the Fair Work Act)
• The wages/salary determined for the role.
After a candidate has been chosen, you will need a customised employment contract ready with the right policies for your business, plus you need to set up payroll details and an employer default superannuation fund.
3. DESIGN YOUR RECRUITMENT STRATEGY
An agile process is the key to success. Your franchisor or other franchisees in the network might be able to share their best practice with you. This includes:
• How and when to advertise the role
• Who will be interviewing, when and how?
• Will you be doing assessments or profiling, and at which stage?
If there are multiple interviews, book out time early in interviewer diaries. Recruitment needs to be real time and continuous. As a benchmark, the average time to recruit is three to four weeks for basic roles (from advertising to offer).
Example of a continuous recruitment timeline:
4. DESIGN YOUR INTERVIEW/
ASSESSMENT PROCESS
Validated research shows that a strong behavioural interview (structured) is the best predictor of future behaviour, helping define a candidate’s suitability. It is also legally defensible. Behavioural event interviews are designed specific to the role and business, and aim to uncover behaviours, values, competence, skills, knowledge, resilience and learning agility.
A strong personality/behavioural profiling tool to support this process is highly valuable as it uncovers key areas of concern to explore in interview.
To determine technical competence, appropriate assessments are available, such as technical questioning, online testing or live observation and assessment.
5. INVEST IN TRAINING
One of the biggest issues for SMEs is their ignorance of the law. One recruitment error could, it is estimated, cost up to 150 per cent of the person’s salary (excluding
legal cases). It is strongly suggested you attend workplace legislation and compliance training designed for smallbusiness owners.
Behavioural recruitment training interviewers need to learn how to be unbiased, spot lies and inconsistencies, delve deeply, evaluate and validate a person’s experience, skills, values, behaviour and competence. Ask your franchisors if they can recommend training.
6. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK
As more than 90 per cent of people admit to lying on their resume, verifying your candidate is crucial. Behavioural reference checking as well as checking licences and qualifications is highly recommended. Be sure you talk to the person’s former manager (accept nothing less) and make sure you ask behavioural based questions.
Remember, there can be more information in what is not said than what is said.
When managers are desperate, they tend to make poor decisions. Save yourself excessive time and costs by following our golden rule: if in doubt, decline.
7. ENSURE GOOD ON-BOARDING
Good on-boarding means your employee is inculcated into your values and expectations, gains the right training and becomes strongly engaged with your business. In this period, do regular reviews.
Monitor behaviour and performance throughout the probationary period. If you have concerns, raise them quickly and nip trouble in the bud early. If issues continue, do not be afraid to let go of the employee in the probation period. Prudence here can save years of toxicity and headaches.
All in all, the legalities of recruitment can make the process complex, but like everything, once you have a process and system in place it is easier. Recruiting great talent needs investment in time and money, but once you have the right talent on board your business results will skyrocket.