Equally exciting and anxiety-inducing, opening a new store requires careful planning to ensure not only a great customer turnout on opening day but also the staff needed to ensure the new location's ongoing day-to-day success. Below are five tips to help deliver an effective recruitment strategy for your new store opening.
First and foremost, your employer brand will play a critical role in the success of your recruitment marketing strategy. According to the Harvard Business Review, a bad reputation costs a company at least 10% more per hire. This increase is due to the costs needed for recruitment marketing, assuming it will take longer and require more advertising dollars for job sponsorship. Additionally, employers will offer a higher salary than competitors for candidates that are willing to overlook the negative reviews.
Research indicates that the top three factors contributing to a bad reputation include job security, dysfunctional teams, and poor leadership. On the other hand, the top three factors contributing to a positive reputation are stability, clear career path opportunities, and the opportunity to work with a top-notch team. Even if you are opening a new store with a brand new team, candidates will see the negative reviews left behind on review sites and can be turned off entirely by your company.
Note: If possible, encourage top-performing employees to leave a review to help showcase their positive experiences. Key milestones to ask for a review include work anniversaries, immediately following a promotion and also after onboarding to the organization.
Once candidates have moved past their initial research and are ready to apply, ensure your application process is easy to navigate and quick to complete. According to Careerbuilder, 60 percent of candidates will abandon an online application because of its length or complexity. Ensure you remove all barriers to entry into the application process and understand your risks of candidate dropoff. This is especially critical for part-time, hourly roles or jobs that are generally harder to fill.
Another barrier to completion is asking candidates to create a profile and login to a career site or ATS before even getting to the application. While submitting a completed application may be required, explore options to remove this feature with your provider for an immediate improvement in your completed application rate.
If you need to garner leads quickly, consider using lead generation landing pages, instead of a traditional application. Only include critical information like name, contact information, and current job title to help keep the candidate engaged enough to complete the form. While this may require more work on the recruiters' part to follow up with these leads, it is one of the most effective and quickest ways to build a pipeline of talent.
Note: In today’s digital world, many sites like Indeed, Google, LinkedIn, and Meta offer a quick-apply solution or a lead capture form within their platforms to help keep candidates engaged and allow them to express interest easily after seeing your recruitment ad on these sites.
Maximize owned and earned channels to help build awareness and create buzz for a new store opening. If existing profile pages exist on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, leverage the event feature to promote the new store opening across social media profiles. Existing followers may be potential applicants who are already loyal to the brand.
For many large organizations, like Amazon, a press release can capture the attention of news outlets and gain free press coverage if they include it in the day’s news. This has been an effective strategy for large, well-known brands and has shown to make a notable impact on Google search results in the days and weeks following.
If you are in a small town or if brand awareness needs to be established, consider more grassroots efforts. Bulletin boards at the local community center or church can be an opportunity for free advertisements. If possible, spend time in front of the new store or at various places in the community handing out flyers with information on the job opportunity if the foot traffic is available.
Note: Brand awareness is a critical component. If you don't have it established, it could cost you more in the long run to attract the candidates you need for a new store opening. Start by using earned and owned channels before launching paid media to take advantage of free advertising opportunities.
Once you have identified a date for the new store opening, take the time to map key dates through reverse planning. Experts indicate that advertising should start at about six months from the new store opening date to allow time for proper training and team building. Also consider in any lead time to gather or develop images and copy for your paid media ads. Paid media should run for at least four weeks to effectively capture your target audience.
As timelines and budget surface, media channels will likely be determined by those two inputs. Regardless of your available budget size, keeping a healthy mix of awareness, interest, and consideration in your media efforts will help support your sponsored job postings. Taking advantage of paid and organic media opportunities will maximize your investment and showcase your employee value proposition to attract talent.
Note: Create a video showing a day in the life to offer potential candidates a sneak peek into your organization. This also helps set expectations and better inform candidates about the opportunity available at your new store.
There are several benefits to maintaining an employee referral program, and it can be an effective way to recruit for a new store opening. Not only can it help maintain a steady talent pipeline, but using an employee referral program can drive in a higher-quality applicant and even reduce the time to staff for a new store opening.
Employee referral programs can also help with establishing a solid team bond before the new store opening. Referred hires stay 70% longer than non-referrals and become loyal employees because of the personal connections. Customers will have a positive experience in your new store if team members are happy and collaborating together. Customers who have a negative experience with unhelpful, rude, or overbearing staff members are likely to shop elsewhere, according to Shopify.
Note: Companies must streamline the referral process for jobs and hiring events. This means making it easy to refer via mobile platforms like Eqo, eliminating the hassle of logging into cumbersome internal systems and, modernizing the referral experience.
Ensure that regardless of the strategies utilized, you measure and analyze the results to comprehend your return on investment — which is either time or money in this case. Pull back on tactics that don’t support your hiring goals and let the data dictate where the investment should be made.
Once the new store opening has passed, take the time to evaluate outcomes and create a playbook for the next store opening. Create a template that can be continuously updated based on the latest market trends and technology.
Are you ready to optimize your recruitment strategy and build a new store opening playbook together? Reach out to us today and start building a stronger, more cohesive workforce!
