Challenge the Pros: Working Together to Enhance the Recruitment Process
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Challenge the Pros: Working Together to Enhance the Recruitment Process

Challenge the Pros: Working Together to Enhance the Recruitment Process

In what ways does your development department work alongside your operations department to enhance the recruitment process?

 

David GrahamDavid Graham
CEO and Founder
Code Ninjas

Our entire team is deeply passionate about the idea that we are a “franchisee support” organization. This means that everything we do from a franchise development standpoint is to create successful franchisees, not just sell units, though our development team is great at that too.

An example of this would be their involvement in New Franchisee Training (NFT). At NFT, the franchise development team works with the franchisees to gather helpful information on how we can make our process smoother and more effective. From the franchisee’s perspective, the development team often is the most trusted member at HQ. Because the franchisees knew them first, getting honest, constructive feedback from franchisees is easier for them. This also gives them a chance to see the franchisees who have not followed the plan and lets them identify “less than helpful” character traits in people they may have missed initially. By doing so, they can more effectively filter out people in the development funnel who are not going to follow the plan and work well on the team.

Another way operations plays an active role in enhancing the recruitment process is at discovery day events. This event is invitation-only and we require that every attendee has completed a checklist of items to secure their space. The space is coveted because we make it an exclusive club and we often have people racing to do their paperwork to secure the last spot. During that event, the operations team goes over different topics related to their particular departments. We cover topics in vendors, daily operations, compliance, training, and curriculum. We don’t give away brand secrets and we don’t talk about revenue, but everything else is on the table. We make it clear that today is their day to ask whatever questions come to mind and to get to know the team, because after today they should have made their decision.

When prospective franchisees come in for discovery day, it’s all hands on deck. The entire team gets involved in making the franchisees feel important and showing them we are listening to their concerns. We make introductions to the support specialists and compliance officers and tell the prospects this is going to be the team dedicated to their success. This reiterates our core DNA of franchisee support and makes them more comfortable to move forward.

We’ve found that our development team receiving feedback from NFT and the operations team getting early exposure to prospective franchisees at discovery day are two great ways to bridge the gap between the franchise development and operations teams.

 

Gary RothGary Roth
CEO and Founder
Kids First Swim Schools

Our training and development department works very closely with our field operations department throughout the entire recruitment and hiring process of full-time employees. Training and development collaborates with field operations to design the interview and application questions for our full-time management and assistant management candidates, and also creates the set of interview questions our managers use when hiring all our part-time staff.

The training and development department also works closely with the company’s HR department to revise and implement changes and updates to our employment screening tools and employee codes of conduct. The department also writes the content for our hiring ads and assists in deciding where these ads are posted. Beyond external recruitment, training and development is similarly engaged in our internal recruitment process and helps identify, train, and prepare our future leaders.

Training and development also collaborates with the field operations leadership team by participating in all interviews for full-time positions within the company, providing a different point of view and a unique set of interview questions to obtain a more well-rounded perspective on candidates. We also promote heavily from within through our assistant manager ranks, trusting training and development to provide valuable input on the readiness of our internal candidates for open management positions.

Beyond the actual recruitment and hiring process, training and development is very involved in onboarding new employees. Our training team organizes, supervises, and designs the training process for all new managers. We do not believe in “one size fits all” training, but instead adapt the training to the individual. Depending on each individual’s knowledge of aquatics, sales and marketing, and management, we adapt their training to optimize their skill set.

We also have different onboarding practices depending on if our new manager is an internal or external candidate. Internal candidates require a much different—and shorter—onboarding process than our external candidates. Part of this onboarding process involves sending our new managers to work and train with our experienced managers in the field. This process provides very valuable experience to the new manager and provides insight into how well they fit into our organization and our vision for the management team. By using the experiences and opinions of our field team collectively with the opinions and experiences of our training team, we can ascertain if we have made the correct decision with regard to our chosen candidate.

Published: June 30th, 2018

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