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| Human Resources.. |
Hiring systems
Can job network help your hiring?
| Everybody knows the importance of a having the best person for the job, but not enough attention is focused on hiring skills. Now technology is coming to the rescue. |
Hiring the best person for the job reduces turnover and training costs, creates a happy workforce, increases a company's bottom line, leads to more satisfied and well-served customers and contributes to a host of other pleasant variables. But, here's the conundrum: Hiring skills are often overlooked when hiring the person who does the hiring. And it's easy for franchise systems to fall victim to this particular trap.
I'm not talking about human resources professionals. I'm talking store managers, area managers and the like. It's common to promote good hourly workers because they know how to run your business. But, in training those managers, how much time is spent on the delicate art of hiring? In a busy environment like a fast-food franchise, running the show day in and day out takes precedence over knowing how to ask the perfectly-nuanced interview question.
And many managers simply don't have the time to properly vet the number of applicants.
"Managers are not generally hired for their hiring skills," says Blake Helppie, CEO of Job App Network. "And it's hard to instill uniformity of hiring practices out in the field in a multi-unit, decentralized hiring model - which is basically what the franchise system is."
Here's where hiring technology can help. Several companies, including Wonderlic, Inc., and Helppie's Job App Network, have developed systems designed to streamline hiring.
This is how it works: You have an open position. The job candidate's first contact with your company comes either online or over the phone, where he or she inputs the basics such as name, address and social security number and then goes on to answer a list of make-or-break questions that you have pre-determined are critical to the particular position you're staffing. Does the job require weekend and holiday work? Reliable transportation? The ability to read English at a certain level? U.S. resident status? Applicants who answer those questions incorrectly get bumped for not meeting the minimum requirements - quickly weeding out unqualified candidates.
Franchises are listening. Job App Network's client list includes some big hitters - Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Subway, Church's Chicken and Popeyes.
Melissa Smith, director of people services at Church's Chicken, says her company ran a test of Job App last year. "We began a pilot in August 2007 with approximately 46 stores," she says. "In our test market, we saw an almost 60 percent reduction in team member turnover overall."
That was impressive enough for Church's to roll out the system companywide. "Our plan is to have our remaining 230 locations on board within the upcoming months," Smith explains. "We found the JobApp product to be beneficial for our company in identifying quality applicants that fit our footprint."
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Wendy Webb writes on human resources and training issues for the franchise industry. Wendy can be reached at wkwebb@charter.net |
"We put the Job App system in place on a Sunday," he says. "By Thursday we had fielded 1,000 calls from job applicants and weeded out 730 unqualified people without having to spend any time doing it. That was compelling, to say the least."
Like Church's, Giftos says the system has helped Coney Island reduce turnover.
"We looked at 2007 as our year to evaluate how well this system was working for us, and the proof is in the pudding," he says. "We've seen a substantial decrease in turnover companywide."
