How Dunkin’ launched an objective-based hiring campaign

As vice president of operations for a quick service restaurant (QSR) brand, you wear many hats. You lead a team of district managers (DMs) and general managers (GMs) in providing exemplary guest services and delivering bottom line profitability for your restaurant system. You also, and equally important, lead your team’s talent development strategy.

And that’s not an easy check-the-box task.

A robust talent development strategy is inclusive of your current and future employees. After all, you need a strong pipeline of available talent to keep your restaurants running. To accomplish this, you work closely with your DMs and even some of your GMs to make sure they have the resources they need to continuously bring in the best talent from their communities.

To maintain a continuous stream of talent, you prioritize training your DMs and GMs on best practices for hiring. You also work with your brand’s marketing team to leverage channels (such as social media) to generate job candidate traffic. But one of the often neglected aspects of building and executing a solid hiring strategy is setting clear objectives for hiring campaigns.

In this article, we breakdown how Dunkin’ successfully established and executed a clear objective in their Life Behind the Counter hiring campaign so you can get ideas on how you may want to design yours.

Dunkin’s Life Behind the Counter hiring campaign 

Dunkin’ is a QSR franchise based in Canton, Mass., with more than 12,600 franchised restaurants in 40 countries worldwide. In 2021, the company’s franchisees needed to add 20,000 new employees to the team. To accomplish this, Dunkin’ launched their Life Behind the Counter campaign.

From the outset of the campaign, Dunkin’ established the clear objective of giving potential job candidates a glimpse of what life behind the counter at Dunkin’ is like. According to Stephanie Lilak, senior vice president at Dunkin’, “We wanted to find a uniquely Dunkin’ way to provide a glimpse of what team members enjoy most about their jobs.”

Dunkin’ executed on its objective by holding a series of live social media events where celebrity hosts interviewed team members around the United States to discover what makes working at Dunkin’ so fun and rewarding. Each team member was paired with a celebrity for an interview and an inside look at how they make Dunkin’s amazing beverages and baked goods.

To enhance the experience (in a way still aligned with the objective), Dunkin’ gave potential job candidates an opportunity to win prizes, such as Dunkin’ backpacks filled with merchandise and accessories, at each live event. Candidates also learned about careers at Dunkin’ restaurants and how to apply.

Clear objectives are the guide to hiring campaign success

The Dunkin’ team knew what they wanted to do. Yes, they wanted to hire more employees—and employees who are likely to stick around longer, but they also wanted people to get an inside look at what it’s actually like to be a part of the Dunkin’ team. According to Lilak, they wanted to “show why Dunkin’ restaurants offer a great opportunity to learn skills in a welcoming environment where people feel appreciated and rewarded.”

Dunkin’ realized that if they were going to succeed in attracting 20,000 new employees, they would need to show potential candidates that Dunkin’ truly cares about their team and that their team enjoys working there. By making the objective for their campaign clear, Dunkin’ was able to run the campaign successfully by combining celebrity presence, social media and a dash of positive reality behind the counter.

Here at Workstream, you can leverage our powerful automated hiring technologies to capitalize on your brand’s next objective-based hiring campaign. By plugging our technologies into a campaign like Life Behind the Counter, you will have a powerful infrastructure for receiving and managing all of the candidate leads you receive from your campaign. Contact us today to learn more!