4 Ways to Improve Your Hiring Process with Promotions

4 minute read

Julie Foley Senior Customer Success Manager

For the retail and restaurant industry, hiring the right employee is crucial to your business success. However, the act of employee recruitment can often be a daunting task. On average, it takes over 40 days and costs over $4,000 for an employer to hire a new employee. But there are many ways you can improve your hiring process to help alleviate these high expenses.   

Digital promotions like quizzes, sweepstakes, and surveys are a fun, interactive way to communicate with your audience and prospective applicants. Optimized for social sharing, promotions are a great tool to expand your applicant pool. Plus, promotions can provide essential information to help identify top candidates more quickly.  

Below we’ve identified five ways you can use contests to make your retail and restaurant hiring process more efficient.  

1. Create promotions relevant to the people you want to target.

Your company’s biggest fans may make some of your best future employees. Run giveaways and sweepstakes with the prize of a gift card or shopping spree to your business. These targeted prizes will entice your loyal followers.  

Alternatively, restaurants may consider a voting bracket such as, “Out of Retirement: Which Discontinued Menu Item Should We Bring Back?” Not only will you get some valuable insight into your menu, but you’ll also discover people who frequent your establishment.   

2. Add a recruitment lead-gen question to all your promotions.

Typically when businesses talk about lead-generation, it means finding people who would purchase your products or services. But in this case, use similar lead-gen tactics to identify people who might be interested in future positions with your company.  

When you create your future digital promotions and contests, add on a recruitment lead-gen question. Adding a simple question like, “We’re hiring! Would you like to learn more?” will help you continuously grow a list of interested applicants to reach out to about future positions.   

3. Don’t forget your opt-in.

It’s more important than ever to make sure we’re only communicating with people who have permitted us to contact them. Even if someone showed interest in your company’s future job positions, be sure they’ve also actively opted-in to receive information from your company.   

Does your company have a plan to contact future applicants via email, phone, or text? Make sure your opt-in includes all the contact methods you’d like to use. Text messaging throughout the hiring process is becoming more and more popular with candidates and businesses. Check out this guide to using SMS in your hiring process. 

One other note about opt-ins: don’t pre-check the opt-in box or make it a required field. You want your database to be as clean and engaged as possible, so it’s essential to make sure the people who opt-in really intended to opt-in.   

4. Use quizzes or surveys to determine skill sets.

As an employer, you may be inundated with applicants and looking for a quick way to identify their skill set.  

Consider creating a quiz or survey such as, “Which of Our Jobs is the Best for You?” Include several questions relevant to different job activities such as: 

  • Do you prefer working with others or by yourself? 
  • Would you rather have a job that’s more active or more slow-paced? 
  • In a team meeting, are you usually the leader or the listener? 

While beneficial for employers, a quiz like this can be valuable to applicants as well. Applicants interested in working for your company may not immediately know which position best suits their skill set. If you have a list of people to reach out to about careers or job postings, send them your quiz to help them learn about your different positions.  

Think it’s time to integrate contests into your hiring process?  

Sign up for a one-on-one meeting with a member of our team to see how Upland Second Street can help you identify more high-quality job applicants, simplify your hiring process, and quickly get you the right person for the job.    

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