Franchisee Recruitment: Who Is Responsible for Hiring?

When preparing an existing business for franchising, it is easy to describe the equipment and product range but overlook a crucial question: who will find people capable of working to your standards? If the owner usually hires on instinct, a franchisee will struggle to replicate that process. A sustainable franchise network needs a clear recruitment system: candidate requirements, assessment tools and a well-defined division of responsibility between the franchisor and the employer.

1. Turn recruitment experience into job requirements

Start not with a job advert template, but by examining what staff at your own outlet actually do. What tasks does the administrator handle? What decisions does the manager make? What must a sales assistant be able to do when they join, and what can they learn once they have started?

Prepare a short role profile for each key position, covering:

• tasks and expected outcomes;
• essential skills required on appointment;
• skills the employee will acquire during training;
• working conditions, hours and reporting lines;
• methods for assessing professional competence;
• indicators that a candidate is unsuitable for this particular role.

Distinguish between essential and desirable requirements. For example, experience with a particular software package may be an advantage rather than a prerequisite if it is easy to learn. A manager’s ability to draw up a shift rota, however, is better tested through a practical exercise than by asking, ‘Can you manage people?’

Test your criteria against your existing team: do employees who perform well actually meet them? If not, you may have described an ideal candidate rather than the outlet’s real needs. Also check whether an experienced employee combines several functions for which a franchisee may need separate people.

Requirements must relate to suitability for the job. Article 64 of the Russian Labour Code prohibits unjustified refusals to enter into an employment contract and discriminatory restrictions. An owner’s preferences regarding age or marital status should not become franchise standards.

2. Separate recruitment support from the employer’s duties

In Russia, commercial concession arrangements—the legal framework used for franchising—are specifically regulated by Chapter 54 of the Civil Code. However, the agreement between franchisor and franchisee does not replace the employment relationship with staff. The employer is usually the franchisee: the company or individual entrepreneur that enters into the employment contracts.

Article 1031 of the Russian Civil Code requires the rights holder to assist with the training and professional development of the user’s employees, unless the agreement provides otherwise. This does not, however, create an automatic obligation to find staff for the franchisee or guarantee that vacancies will be filled.

Rather than simply saying ‘we help you build a team’, set out a specific division of tasks:

Activity	What to clarify
Preparing the job advert	Who writes it and adapts the terms to the local market
Advertising vacancies	Who chooses the platforms and pays for listings
Initial screening	Who contacts candidates and keeps track of applications
Assessing the manager	Whether the franchisor takes part and how its assessment is recorded
Hiring decision	Who makes the offer and enters into the employment contract
Restarting the search	What happens if a candidate declines the offer or leaves

If the franchisor assesses a prospective manager, it is best to describe the outcome as an assessment of whether the candidate meets the professional requirements. The employment decision and the formalities remain the employer’s responsibility. These must not be replaced by informal instructions from head office directly to the franchisee’s staff.

3. Provide assessment tools rather than promising results

Give franchisees more than a sample job advert. Provide a compact recruitment toolkit: an interview guide, a scoring sheet, a practical exercise and a final assessment form. Each tool should test a specific competency.

For example, you could give a prospective manager a hypothetical scenario: an employee has failed to turn up for a shift, a delivery has arrived and a customer is demanding a refund. Ask the candidate to prioritise the issues and explain what they would do. Assess their reasoning, awareness of the limits of their authority and attention to safety, rather than whether their wording matches your model answer.

The exercise should simulate work, not become an unpaid shift. Allowing someone to carry out actual work has legal consequences under the Russian Labour Code; calling it a ‘trial day’ does not remove the requirements to formalise the arrangement and pay for the work. Any probationary period must also be agreed in accordance with employment law, rather than imposed verbally.

Set out a separate procedure for handling CVs. Sharing candidates’ personal data with the franchisor requires a lawful basis under Federal Law No. 152-FZ ‘On Personal Data’. Applying for a vacancy with a franchisee does not, in itself, authorise unrestricted circulation of a CV within the network. Specify the purposes of processing, recipients, access permissions and retention periods; obtain the appropriate consent where necessary.

4. Test the system at your own outlet

Before passing the tools on to franchisees, ask a manager who was not involved in developing them to run the recruitment process. Have them conduct interviews using the guide and explain why they recommend a candidate. If they cannot reach a decision without prompts from the owner, the system is not yet ready.

Compare the scores given by different interviewers. Differences often reveal criteria that are too vague, such as ‘proactive’, ‘one of us’ or ‘a good manager’. Replace these with observable behaviours and clear examples.

Then agree a recruitment plan with the franchisee: the order in which roles will be filled, the advertising budget, feedback deadlines and what to do if there are too few candidates. Do not promise a standard time to hire: it depends on the local labour market and the terms on offer. If applications are scarce, first review pay, working hours and the content of the advert rather than automatically lowering professional requirements.

Practical takeaway: before selling a franchise, prepare a role profile for one key position, a standard assessment sheet and a table allocating recruitment responsibilities. Test them without the founder’s involvement. Franchisees need a repeatable system for finding staff, not a vague promise to ‘provide a team’.