QSRs Need to Look Beyond Resumes to Better Serve Volume Hiring Efforts

Staffing struggles for quick service restaurants (QSRs) have led to a number of creative solutions over the past two years. Many QSRs have been doing all they can to attract candidates, from offering higher wages and signing bonuses to providing additional flexibility in scheduling.

Yet many of these staffing concerns remain, often with dire consequences for QSRs including limited menus and shortened hours.

With the labor market still in flux, QSRs remain under pressure to quickly scale up their existing workforce. As a result, hiring processes tend to favor quantity and speed over quality. But as studies have shown, the cost and time associated with onboarding a new hire can be a major investment for a company—some estimates say as much as $4,125 per hire. For QSRs that hire thousands of employees every year, the mounting costs of the wrong hire can add up fast.

Instead of gearing hiring processes towards quantity and limiting candidate evaluation to the experiences listed on a resume, QSRs should instead consider incorporating a more skills- and personality-based evaluation process into volume hiring. Leveraging modern tools in automation can help shepherd the process. By focusing not only on the amount of hires, but also prioritizing the right hires, QSRs can help drive retention efforts as well as achieve better business outcomes.

Creating a Two-Way Hiring Process

One of the stumbling blocks that plague QSR hiring efforts out of the gate is a fundamental misunderstanding of the candidate evaluation process. Of course, one of the main objectives is for a company to learn as much about the candidate as possible in order to determine their aptitude for a position. But almost equally as important is providing information to the candidate about the position and culture of the company as a means of setting expectations.

If a candidate is applying for a position and expects to be hired on as a fry cook only to learn that part of their responsibilities include working the register or cleaning the bathrooms, that misalignment of expectations to duties might leave an employee feeling misled in hiring—and could make them more likely to quit.

In order to avoid this sort of misalignment, companies can consider providing informational videos and messaging that not only sets candidate expectations for the position, but also sells the culture of the company so the applicant is enthusiastic about the position. QSRs want to be sold on a candidate; but in a competitive job market where there may be a comparable open position at a nearby restaurant, it’s equally important for a candidate to be sold on the company.

Instituting an Updated Hiring Process 

In volume hiring efforts, scalability is a driving motivation for many QSRs. The resulting application process tends to be as easy as possible for applicants, featuring one-click applications and simple resume uploads. The problem with this process is that it puts the onus on hiring managers who are then tasked with sorting through dozens or hundreds of resumes in order to find the most suitable candidates. Once a quota is reached, this initial round of evaluation is completed. Unfortunately, it may have left multiple quality candidates on the bottom of the pile, and candidates that may not be right for the position may have made it through to interviews.

This process also limits a candidate to their listed experience, which fails to tell the full story of an applicant’s true fit for a position. By understanding the skills, aptitudes and personality traits that make a QSR worker successful—communication, collaboration, social skills, adaptability and flexibility, responsibility and initiative, and more—organizations can then leverage assessments within the application process to identify candidates with transferable skills and better predict long-term success in a position.

One of the best ways of evaluating candidates is through situational judgment tests (SJTs). In SJTs, applicants are presented with real-world scenarios that they may face in the position and select responses to those scenarios ranked best and worst, in their opinion. What makes SJTs so beneficial is their two-fold effect: because the tests are tailored specifically for the position, it continues to provide a realistic job preview to the candidate, in addition to giving hiring managers insight into a candidate’s behavioral responses.

To get an even fuller picture of a candidate, the hiring process can also include personality questionnaires. These evaluations can be strong indicators of a candidate’s motivation and attitude, and can further help identify transferable skills that may not be obvious from a standard resume.

For example, if a candidate’s resume doesn’t have QSR experience, but SJTs and personality questionnaires show a candidate has strong communication skills and an aptitude for teamwork, they may be the right fit for the position even if their work history doesn’t reflect those skills.

In the end, by leveraging these skills- and personality-focused assessments within an automated hiring process, hiring teams are left with large quantities of actionable data. With standard resume collection, hiring managers may think they’re getting insights, but in many cases that data is locked away in an applicant tracking system (ATS) or otherwise squandered. Leveraging an automated, evaluation-based hiring system yields stronger candidates and puts in place a system that can be optimized to identify even stronger candidates in future hiring efforts.

About the Author

Wesley Suitt is the Regional Head of Client Success, Americas, at Harver,  a volume hiring solution for hourly roles that works with clients like McDonald’s and Chili’s. Suitt leads a team at Harver who helps clients develop and implement innovative strategies and programs around hiring decisions to make the recruiting process successful and seamless for both hiring managers and applicants. He has over a decade of experience in recruitment across a wide range of business functions where he specialized in utilizing technology and innovation to transform recruiting processes and procedures. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University and is a proud Blue Raider.  

Wesley’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleysuitt/

Harver’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/harver/