Chapter 214: Chapter 214: Recruitment
With the previous accumulation, the subsequent work went faster and more smoothly. As soon as the renovation was completed, the follow-up work was immediately followed up. In this way, before the end of May, the second batch of five stores opened on the same day. As a result, within just two months, there were already ten branches of Youjia in the city.
The number ten seems to be a threshold. When there were only five stores, it was still a trial and error, a small business. But with ten stores, there is a certain scale, and with scale comes influence.
Moreover, compared to the small shops in every street and alley, Youjia convenience stores are the regular army. The shopping environment is comfortable, the management is standardised, the service is attentive, and the prices are affordable. Now, many housewives who need to buy something on a daily basis will use it as their first choice when they are nearby. Of course, if you expect those people who don't have a Youjia convenience store near their home to take an extra trip to the store, Youjia does not currently have the appeal to make them do so.
Feng Yiping now encounters some housewives carrying Yijia plastic bags when entering and leaving the community, and sometimes hears them talking, 'Have you got the flyer? There's another promotion tomorrow.'
This is also the difference between Yijia and an ordinary small shop, where would a small shop organise a promotion.
At noon, when Feng Yiping arrived, Zhou Xinyu and the others were packing their luggage. From today onwards, the majority of the group would return to the provincial capital to prepare for large-scale expansion there.
'Are ten stores still not enough?' Feng Yiping asked him. Although ten stores sounded like a lot, they were still sparsely spread across an urban area of nearly 30 square kilometres.
'It's not impossible to open a few more, and it's easy to do so. However, in that case, there's no guarantee that each store will make a profit. My opinion is that we should first stabilise these ten stores, and then we'll see in the second half of the year!'
Zhou Xinyu's advice is very prudent. For convenience store owners, it is actually not easy to make every store profitable.
Sometimes, you choose a location for a store for publicity purposes, as in the case of the Starbucks store that later opened in the Forbidden City. Or you may follow a competitor who has opened a store in a location and then open one there yourself.
Feng Yiping thought Zhou Xinyu's words were also good. In the early stages of starting a business, it is better to be a bit more stable. Taking too big a step sometimes is not necessarily a good thing.
'Then I'll leave the work in the provincial capital to you. For now, you can only squeeze into the decoration company to work. When you are looking for a store, you can also pay attention to the place where you work. Personally, I don't want to rent an office building. It would be best if there is a place where you can buy it.'
Li Jia interjected, 'If you find the right one, buy a whole building?'
'If it's suitable, then buy it.' Feng Yiping said to them with some grandeur. During the summer vacation, with the existing capital, he would speculate twice more, and he was confident that he could turn an eight-digit US dollar deposit into one starting with 2.
'Haha, that's easy to say. Now that there's money, anything can be done.'
'Also, if the shops in the business district are not easy to rent, you can also look for ones that you can buy.' Feng Yiping added a blessing: the better the location, the more difficult it is to rent a shop. If you can buy it, then you have one more option.
The training of staff during the preparations for opening large-scale stores is always the top priority. This time, Feng Zhenchang did not get involved, and Zhou Xinyu personally took a few people to the county technical school and secondary school to pick people.
The situation of the previous batch of 20 had long been reported back to their families and schools. Although the wages could not compete with some places on the coast, they were close to home, the environment was good, and the work was considered light and easy, so they were warmly welcomed at both schools.
Every year at this time, the graduating classes at the secondary vocational school are a little restless. After studying for two or three years and spending so much money, the final results will be seen in a month or two.
Just last week, with the help of the career teachers, the students in the electromechanical class were packaged and sent to an electronics factory in Guangdong, and it seems that half of the security class has also found a place to go.
But to be honest, no one really values the opportunity to work in a factory. To put it bluntly, if they hadn't spent so much money studying for two or three years, they could have just found a job in a factory themselves.
Some opportunities are different, however. For example, today, the accounting and computer science students are a little restless, because the convenience store in the province has come back to recruit staff, and the school has mainly arranged for some students from these two classes to apply.
This is a good opportunity, close to home. Alumni who used to work there wrote back saying that the work was good, the pay was good, and there was room for development. Of the first ten people from the school to go, three have already become store managers, earning over a thousand yuan a month!
I also heard that the future regional manager will be chosen from among them. Although the title of manager is now commonplace, a manager responsible for a region definitely still carries some weight.
The recruitment venue for the secondary vocational school was set up in the school's academic affairs office. Zhou Xinyu chose this as the recruitment venue with some thought, as it would generally put pressure on the students to come here.
Hu Junting, a finance and accounting major, was a little anxious. She personally felt that today's opportunity was not bad, but the class teacher had already ordered fifteen classmates to go for an interview, and she still hadn't gotten her turn. Could it be that she wouldn't get a chance?
Finally, when the teacher announced the last five people, she was called.
The five of them, with excitement and trepidation, went downstairs to the office of the Academic Affairs Office, sat quietly on the bench in front of the office and waited. Inside, the interview was in progress, and they could hear people talking, but they couldn't make out what was being said. What questions would they ask? What should I do if I encounter a question that is difficult to answer?
They were here, thinking nervously, while the class teacher and the other teachers were relaxed, chatting and laughing in a group, arms around each other. Hu Junting felt that when she looked at the teachers now, she didn't see a few teachers, but a few people with jobs. It's okay, starting today, I will also be a person with a job! She encouraged herself mentally.
She was the third of the five to be called in. There was no teacher inside, and behind the two desks sat three strangers in suits. The sunlight streaming in through the large glass window behind them made it difficult for her to see their faces at first.
'Please sit down,' said the person in the middle, in a very formulaic tone that did not reveal his emotions.
The questions were not complicated. First, a brief introduction of yourself. That was fine, as the teacher had been trained before. Then the questions became completely random. For example, the last one was, 'What is your ideal?' The next question was, 'When is your father's birthday?'
The last question left her a little at a loss for words. She was asked to briefly describe the difference between a group of sheep led by a lion and a group of lions led by a sheep. When she came out of the interview room, she was a little confused as to what she had actually said in response to the last question. She just felt that she had messed up the interview.
However, when the teacher finally announced the results, she had been selected!
Out of the forty interviewees from the two classes, Zhou Xinyu and the others selected twenty. The vocational school did the same, selecting twenty as well, making a total of forty. During the final assessment, they planned to eliminate ten, so that there would still be thirty people left, and the store clerks from the top ten stores in the provincial capital would be available.
Just as their recruitment work was drawing to a close, the person in charge of graduate employment at the nursing school also came to them, asking them to visit the school. He had a good point: 'Our nursing students definitely have the strongest sense of service!'
The teacher was right. A convenience store is a service industry, and it would be good to have a more diverse workforce, so as to avoid the formation of small groups. So they went to the nursing school, but the result was that they were really spoilt for choice.
The nursing school is also known as the 'land of women'. In the end, they only chose ten girls based on their appearance. These ten girls, standing at the cashier, are definitely a sight to behold, and will naturally increase the store's business.
Zhou Xinyu now understood why Feng Yiping had specifically included those clauses in the agreement. Indeed, if the staff responsible for training had proceeded as he had originally planned, they might have used the opportunity of their work to seek personal gain.
As it turned out, the final result was that there were a total of 50 people from the three schools. As for the training venue, after comparing the conditions of the two schools, it was finally decided to hold the training at the vocational school.
At the opening ceremony the next morning, Zhou Xinyu emphasised training discipline in front of the school leaders and trainees, and also reiterated the company's requirements for the personnel department staff responsible for training. He asked the school and trainees to supervise, 'In order to ensure the orderly and fair training and selection, anyone who gives gifts to or invites training teachers for dinner will be eliminated immediately upon discovery. Anyone who accepts gifts or invitations from training teachers will also be dismissed immediately upon confirmation by the company.'
When these two points were emphasised, there was an immediate buzz of excitement. Everyone welcomed fairness and order.
At the same time, these two disciplines also made everyone yearn for the company even more. If fairness could be achieved during training and selection, it would definitely be possible to achieve fairness at work in the future.