Hiring and retaining top talent is crucial but challenging in the hyper-competitive fast food and retail industries. Alongside high turnover rates, these hourly-wage businesses often struggle to get enough applicants for open roles. This article will explore leveraging ads and social media to recruit skilled candidates and drive applicant volume.
Paid Job Postings
One effective hiring strategy is using paid job postings on high-traffic sites. Platforms like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and Facebook Jobs allow you to geo-target ads to appear for job seekers right in your area. You can tailor ad messaging and programmatic filters to optimize visibility among your target demographics.
For example, fast food locations near college campuses could target ads to users aged 18-24 within a certain mile radius. Budget-conscious boutique retail stores might limit ads to users searching for entry-level hourly positions under specific pay rates.
Highlight key information like wages, benefits, flexibility, and growth opportunities. Dynamic ads can even automatically pull from your latest open roles on your careers page to keep ads fresh.
A data-driven approach of continually testing different headlines, images, copy, and targeting parameters will uncover the highest-performing combinations for driving qualified candidate clicks.
Social Media Recruiting
Leveraging your brand’s social media channels is another valuable talent-sourcing strategy. Publish open positions natively on platforms where your target audience is highly active, like Instagram and TikTok for teen and college demographics.
Ask followers to tag friends who might be a good fit. Turn the job post into a social shareable that users can easily spread within their own networks. Develop a referral rewards program to incentivize social referrals from happy employees.
Create short video job teasers highlighting your culture and values. Ask current employees to post authentic employee testimonials on their own social channels to showcase the experience.
Also, engage followers through informal Q&As where potential candidates can ask questions about the hiring process, day-to-day responsibilities, or company culture to pique interest.
Proactive Social Recruiting
Take your social recruiting a step further by proactively identifying and engaging passive candidates you want to apply. Search social platforms for users whose profiles, skills, and interests align with open roles.
Then, reach out, pointing them to the job description while briefly explaining why you think they would be a great fit. This helps surface qualified people who might not be actively searching for a new position.
To attract more niche and in-demand talent, follow relevant hashtags and groups. Engage with discussions and share job openings with gaming design communities if hiring cashiers passionate about e-sports. Join hospitality industry groups if seeking experienced baristas or servers.
This targeted social recruiting casts a much wider net by engaging active and passive candidates already spending time online.
Student and Alumni Sourcing
Fast food and retail businesses rely heavily on high school and college-age workers. Developing ongoing recruiting partnerships with local schools and vocational programs provides direct access to this talent pipeline.
Ask to present or host a booth at career fairs and networking events. Provide informational flyers that counselors can distribute to students and recent grads. Advertise in school newspapers, newsletters, or athletic programs.
If your workforce includes many alumni from specific colleges or high schools, connect with those institutions. Cultivate referrals by keeping alumni groups and career centers apprised of openings. Offer incentives for student referrals as well.
Getting your brand top of mind early and authentically engaging the student community will position you as an employer of choice.
Optimizing and Tracking Outcomes
With any external recruiting efforts, meticulous tracking and optimization are required to maximize ROI. Each job ad, social post, or outreach initiative should have a unique identifier, UTM parameters, or coupon code.
This allows you to directly tie applicants and new hires back to the specific campaign that brought them in. Closely monitor metrics like cost per click, click-through rates, cost per applicant, and cost per hire by source.
Compare performance across different platforms, creatives, targets, and channels. Double down on what delivers quality applicants at the most efficient cost. Kill underperforming assets quickly. Advanced analytics informs an agile approach to resource allocation so you drive continual optimization.
Streamlining Recruiting with Chattr
Executing an expansive advertising and social media recruiting strategy takes significant effort and tracking. Chattr provides powerful automation technology to simplify and enhance your efforts.
Chattr’s unified recruitment platform distributes your job posts across paid sites, social networks, and campus channels in one click for wider reach. Automated tracking and tagging means every applicant is traceable by source.
Real-time analytics give data-driven insights to optimize your hiring ads and social strategy to identify which messages, platforms, and targets convert best. Chattr chatbots even engage interested candidates via messaging apps.
By streamlining tedious manual tasks, Chattr lets you focus on big picture recruitment marketing strategy. Schedule a demo today to see how Chattr can help fast food, and retail businesses win the talent war.
