Staffing strategy for a gourmet college campus coffee shop

Airbus Corporate Strategy

Staffing Organizations

Coffee business is much in demand in Washington D.C. People like to have coffee almost for all the day but there are some peak hours of business between 6:00 A.M. until 10:00 P.M. On weekdays and Monday 7:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M. On weekends. Although people like taking coffee from coffee shops everywhere in city but the students love to have it after classes. A gourmet coffee shop business is planned to serve students outside a college campus. The business proposal section presented here discusses how the coffee shop will be staffed. The business plan is prepared to elaborate recruitment, selection and assessment strategies to the bank lending money. The business plan is based on staffing requirements of 3 store managers and 10 coffee servers. The staffing objectives will remain same however the methods may improve with time to manage costs of recruitment and selection.

Recruitment Plan and Strategy

The recruitment plan is based on objectives of attracting as many qualified candidates as possible. The plan collects information on candidates to filter applicants from the pool (Croteau, 2012). Here are some steps that will be taken prior to publishing advertisement for jobs.

Company culture: The culture of coffee shop will play a major role in defining what sort of people should be working here. Since most of the customers will be students and teachers, the coffee shop culture should be simple yet sophisticated that facilitates serving coffee to groups as well as individual students.

What impression to hold: The Company must be clear what sort of impression it should hold. One thing can help in defining impression, demographic profile of customers. Since the clients are young, educated people, the company may like to give an impression of educated staff. No wonder the company can encourage college students to join coffee shop as employee and take break during their lectures.

Clarity of Job: The job of mangers as well as servers must be clear so that applicants are well communicated and they know what they are applying for. This will filter applicants and only relevant applicants will apply for job (Croteau, 2012).

After taking these steps, the company can develop a communication message to attract a pool of candidates. These candidates can be from within the circle of business or outside. The company can hire staff internally or externally.

Internal Recruitment: Employees are hired internally within an organization on the basis of referrals and recommendations. Since the gourmet coffee shop has not established yet, there is no existing staff. However, personal references can be used as a source of internal recruitment. The internal recruitment will save the costs of advertising, screening and will reduce the risks of uncertain employee background (Croteau, 2012). The internal recruitment method can be used for recruiting 3 store managers. Once the managers are internally hired, the further recruitments in coming three years can be based on complete external hiring.

External Recruitment: The staff can be hired externally by posting ads in newspaper, websites, blogs etc. This ensures that maximum number of applicants get the message and can apply for the job. However, the costs of advertising will increase. There will be too many resumes that will need to be considered and it will take time to short list candidates. With a panel of 3 or 2 store managers internally recruited, the coffee shop may recruit 10 coffee servers externally.

Information Pack

The applicants will be communicated the details of the job they are hired for and the salary skills to do the job. Though the final salary package will be disclosed after selection, the candidates will be told the rough range of salary that will be comparable with market rates (Recruitment Strategy, n.d.). The candidates will know what they are going to be hired for, what will be working hours and days of working. The information pack will be flexible and will ensure that the recruitment information can be used in coming three years as well. Hence the salary details and expansion plans will be based on inflation and environmental changes. There are two purposes for using application information pack. The applicants are guided how to apply for the job and briefs the applicants about the company and what will be their role in the company.

Communication Message

The communication message to brief the applicants about job and to attract them should be very effective and may include creative ideas. The applicants can be categorized for the sake of convenience into two calories via managers and staff. Though it is planned to hire managers internally, in case there are no sufficient applicants through internal resources, the managerial applicants and staff applicants can be communicated externally using following messages:

Communication Message for Managers:

"If you are a coffee lover and have got administrative skills and graduation in business administration, you can be a part of STUDENT GORMET COFFEE SHOP. Avail the opportunity and show in WALK-IN INTERVIEWS for post of Manager at STUDENT GORMET COFFEE SHOP.

Bring your resume at Suit 2, Floor 5, and Office 15. For more details contact Mr. Shawn 01234567789."

Communication Message for Staff:

"Drinking coffee is as much fun as serving coffee at STUDENT GORMET COFFEE SHOP. If you are energetic and passionate enough to serve coffee and get paid handsomely, the best thing would be to send your CV to -- . The shortlisted candidates will be contacted by end of May, 2013."

The messages will be published as advertisements on the local newspaper. The local newspapers charge low costs for posting ads plus the staff requirements can be fulfilled locally hence the company will not post ads in newspaper of other areas unless otherwise needed.

Communication Medium

Communicating the recruitment message can adopt several mediums. The message can be communicated through recruitment agencies or by company itself. The role of recruitment agencies is critical when either very technical staff is hired or his recruitment takes place at wide range. For hiring 13 employees in all, the company can itself communicate with applicants (Bernroider and Koch, 2001). Various medium of communication can be newspaper, telephone, mobile texts, email, websites and online forums. While hiring locally and t a micro level, the best job can be done by local newspapers. The text messaging and phone calls are not only too laborious but also require data gathering which is useless when hiring for a non-technical job (Croteau, 2012). The company can easily attract pool of candidates by posting ad in local newspapers. The cost and well as scope of newspaper ads suit the company. However the company can choose not to post ads only in single newspaper but a couple of them. Also the advertisement can be published multiple times not only one time.

Initial and Substantive Assessment Methods

The candidates will be assessed on the basis of performance standards mentioned in the offer letter. The employee should have particular mentioned knowledge, skills and abilities. The candidate will be assessed quarterly. The performance of employee will be maintained in registers initially to summarize work hours served and the number of clients served (Bernroider and Koch, 2001). These criteria will last only for the first quarter. Once the company starts running, the employee will be assessed on the basis of how well he serves. The customers will be asked to formally and informally give their feedback. Points will be added to employee performance card if he receives positive feedback and his point will be deducted if he gets negative feedback. The company will assess employee KSAOs in following manner:

Knowledge: The employee should display in his performance that he has knowledge to do his job. He should know about customer tastes and the needs in different seasons. He should also have the knowledge of competitor businesses.

Skills: The employee should be skilled to serve customer needs. No customer should leave the coffee shop unnerved. Therefore the coffee servers are expected to work efficiently and serve orders in time.

Abilities: The employee should be able to understand needs of the customer. He should be able to sit customer properly and note down the orders. He should not ask too many times for customer to repeat the orders. The manager should be able to solve and avoid employee conflicts. The employees should be able to manage work hours and work load in high business ours.

Others: The employees should display right attitude towards serving the customers.

In case any employee is unable to show the right set of KSAOs, he will be warned to improve and can be fired in case he fails to do so.