Franchisors should have a formal franchise recruitment process, a process that is adhered to with all potential franchisee candidates. That doesn’t mean all candidates will pass through all phases of the process, but it does mean that key steps are practiced in the right sequence to ensure a robust recruitment process.
A formal recruitment process is needed for a number of reasons, not least the following:
- To provide a professional and systematic approach that impresses franchisee candidates
- To protect the franchisor from adverse legal liability, associated with recruitment process claims that might not be correct.
- To help identify unqualified / unsuitable candidates early, to minimise wasted management time.
- To protect IP dissemination by only sharing the most valuable IP with candidates far into the recruitment process, and
- To provide the best chance of securing high-quality candidates
The recruitment process can have many parts and paths. For a greenfield recruitment process, the process will begin with the initial inquiry, be that from a website form, email, telephone call or franchise expo expression of interest form.
The recruitment process then needs to carry through all of the different stages of recruitment from confidentiality or non-disclosure, to application forms, pre-entry training, initial business plans, interviews, tours, reference, credit and police checks, disclosure, legal and accounting advice, agreement signing, payment of initial fees, and so on.
This process should be formalised with clear responsibilities at each step, ensuring it doesn’t get mishandled in any way. This is particularly important for large companies where multiple people (sometimes from different divisions, levels and teams) may play a part in the process.
The recruitment process should be constructed in a way that both parties (i.e., franchisor and potential franchisee) can make a good decision about the potential for the partnership.
Relevant questions:
- How rigid and formalised is your franchise recruitment process?
- When did you last review the steps, content and process of your franchise recruitment process?
About the Franchising Best Practice 500 Series
This is part of a series of franchising best practices. Franchize Consultants is sharing and publishing these best practices weekly for the betterment of franchising. We know that better knowledge and execution of franchising best practices leads to bigger and more valuable franchisor and franchisee businesses.
We have assembled the first 40 best practices into The Best Practice Handbook, which is available for purchase.
