How retail and restaurants can improve their recruiting results

3 key components to a successful recruitment program.

Front-line employees are the face of your organization and the first impression for a customer to your company, products, and brand. They work as cashiers, sales associates, food service personnel, and managers. They generate revenue and provide the customer service that your customers remember. Why are you not ensuring that a best-fit candidate is hired every time for your front-line jobs?

Consistently recruiting quality employees is difficult. Companies can’t attract the right people, or even worse they’re hiring the wrong people. Managers are spending tons of time filtering through unqualified candidates or posting jobs online using ineffective job ads.

Great candidates do not stay on the market for very long either. The best candidates are off the market within 10 days. If your recruitment strategy is not optimized, then you are going to be missing out on the quality candidates your company needs.

The truth is that the responsibility for most retail and restaurant recruitment doesn’t sit with Corporate and Executive level personnel within your organization. Front-line hiring often sits with individual Store Managers who are then made responsible for making great hires in between running a successful store. There is also a general lack of tools available for most Store Managers. A simple interview script and a ‘Help Wanted’ sign or job board account doesn’t provide the framework to continuously attract and hire the right candidates.

47% of small businesses cannot find qualified candidates for open positions. Finding the right person for a job takes a streamlined, repeatable process.

What is the answer? How can your organization start to hire quality front-line employees that are engaged and ready to help grow your business? Whether you’re recruiting for your next Store Manager or cashier, there are 3 elements that go into a consistent, successful recruitment strategy:

1. People – Properly trained recruiters are invaluable. Knowing where to look and what messages to use to attract candidates to your job ads is worth its weight in gold. Ensure that the people running your recruitment program are actively targeting qualified candidates, have the experience to identify and screen great candidates, and can effectively communicate your employment value proposition.

2. Process – A recruitment strategy is only as good as the components it consists of. Paying attention to, and building out, every step of the recruitment process improves your candidate experience and ensures that you are driving a program that can be replicated consistently. A successful process creates data that can be used to refine your candidate sourcing, the effectiveness of your candidate screening and interviews, and measure post-hire success.

3. Technology – Technology is the underlying element that brings your people and process together. Candidates are increasingly relying on technology to apply to your organization. Your process should drive candidates to career sites and online portals, assess skill sets through behavioural assessments and interviews and then measure the results of each step so that meaningful metrics can be reported on.

About Mindfield

Mindfield is a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solutions provider that partners with companies to create powerful hourly workforces. Our solutions combine professional recruiters, simple to use technology and a data-driven hiring strategy that promises to improve the quality of your hourly workforce. This approach focuses on tying business outcomes such as sales performance, tenure, and engagement to the selection, hiring, and measurement of quality candidates.