We recently published one of the most ambitious reports that the CareerPlug team has taken on in a while.
We pulled data from about 46,000 franchise locations (6.2 million applicants, 268,000 interviews, and 70,500 hires), to create a hiring benchmarks report specifically for service franchises.
(If you haven’t had a chance to download the free report yet, you can find it here.)
Since it came out, I’ve been talking with a lot of franchisors about the findings and what makes the most sense to track in terms of people ops. Most are thinking about how to help franchisees evaluate applications per job posting, average time to fill a role, cost per applicant, etc.
Those are all good things to track and definitely a good place to start.
But after digging deep in the data we pulled, I’m more convinced than ever that numbers alone can’t tell you everything about what’s happening in hiring across the system.
You have to know what questions to ask too.
Application volume
It’s easy to track applicant numbers in an ATS. But if volume is your key metric, then the value of every applicant is equally weighted.
The risk is that you might underestimate hiring sources that drive real quality applicants but represent an overall smaller slice of the hiring pie. For example our analysis found that referrals made up just 2.5% of applicants across the service franchise segment, but accounted for 10.5% of hires — converting at nearly 6x the rate of job boards.
The question to ask: Which of your applicant sources actually produce hires and what are you doing to get more from the ones that do it the best?
Time-to-fill
The gaps in how long it takes to fill roles in our data vary widely between brands and I’m sure even more widely between individual locations. What is more important to look at, in our experience, is time-to-contact.
You want to know how quickly applicants are hearing back after applying. Our data showed that this is the most important lever in hiring that is entirely at the franchisee’s control (unlike applicant volume, for example). And it’s worth understanding what’s happening here because how quickly you contact applicants is a crucial factor in hiring success.
The question to ask: Where is the time going at your slowest locations — is it reviews, scheduling, or something else?
Positions filled
A new hire is a celebration. But whether the person will stay is harder to predict and matters more. You want to take a broader look.
If a location keeps hiring the same position three times in a year because of turnover, your filled-positions number could appear healthy while that owner bleeds time and money. And if you are losing people within the first 90 days, then you need to focus more on what happens after the position is filled: onboarding.
The question to ask: Which locations are quietly re-hiring the same job over and over (especially losing people at the 90-day cliff), and what can your field team do to help support them?
To me, these are the critical questions to ensure you are making the right moves for your business.
More soon,
Clint