Hiring and Recruiting Challenges
The UPS Store franchise owners know that the December holiday season is the busiest time of the year. As a result, it’s essential to have a competent, well-trained team of employees in place well before December arrives. The UPS Store owners like Williams recognize that despite the seasonal ups and downs of their business, hiring is a year-round activity. Managers never know when an employee may decide to leave or it may be necessary to let a staff member go. Before automating applicant tracking, the managers at each of Williams’ three stores were on their own for hiring new employees.
They would usually place ads in local community newspapers and post help wanted signs at the stores. Williams found that this approach was never very effective. Store managers were at the mercy of whoever came in the door and these candidates usually weren’t well-suited for the job. “We often ended up with last-minute hires. There was no time to train people and prepare them for the peak season. The stores got into desperation mode and I had to step in as the owner. That took time away from my other duties as an Area Franchisee for Southern California,” said Williams.
Franchises Save Time and Money and have Better Candidates with Hyrell
Williams learned about Hyrell at a The UPS Store quarterly network meeting. Hyrell was the first company he had seen with the tools needed to accurate post job listings and to hire in a more appropriate way. The most useful tool was Hyrell’s ability to filter applicants and identify the highest quality candidates. This would dramatically reduce the amount of time that store managers spent on hiring.
Initially, Williams tried Hyrell with a package that supported a limited number of job postings per month. After seeing the results, however, he signed up for the Franchise Subscription package which allows him to pay a monthly fee, rather than a per post fee. Williams’ stores can now have multiple open positions at any time, as well as archive quality applicants that are not immediately hired. “The Franchise Subscription plan made sense for us since we have multiple stores. Also, this package enables us to build a solid pipeline of quality candidates from prior applicants. Although the December holidays are our peak season, we are hiring all year long. You never know when you will have an open position and the faster that job can be filled with a quality candidate, the better our stores perform,” said Williams.
Flexibility with Franchise Subscription Hiring Platform
Williams’ three The UPS Stores have been using Hyrell for around one year and it’s had a positive impact on employee and store performance. Higher quality applicants pick up the job faster and jump into the team more rapidly. “We spend less time training new hires now, in order to get them up to speed. I can’t say enough about how important quality applicants have been to the business and what a difference it has made in-store performance,” said Williams.
As franchise owners evaluate their hiring processes, Williams recommends that they consider how much time they spend finding quality employees and then determine how Hyrell can reduce that. “We found it worthwhile to try the individual job postings, test the results, and then move to the Franchise Subscription. Hyrell is discussed at all The UPS Store network meetings and the dialogue is always positive,” said Williams.
