NEW YEAR NEW OPPORTUNITIES

by Shirley Hughes and Charles Weller (Howarth Franchising) 

A new year can mean new beginnings. At The Franchise Careers Centre (part of the Howarth Franchising Group) we spend much of our time speaking to professionals within the franchise community, who wish to move to new roles to progress their careers. For many, although they have good experience in one aspect of franchise management (eg franchisee recruitment), they are extremely light in other areas (eg franchisee development). This becomes an issue if you want to move into a general franchise management role, when most employers will look for rounded experience.

We would recommend strongly that you plan and manage your career as a franchise executive. If you do, you are far more likely to realise your ambition.

Some thoughts for you to consider:

• Decide on the role you would like to have in say 10 years time – bear in mind that this should be based on more than wishful thinking. If your personality is such that you prefer working alone, rather than as part of a team, there’s little point in focussing on becoming a team manager.

• Think about the type of franchised business that you would like to work for – if a B2B management franchise, and you are currently with a low-value home-based concept, then you should plan to broaden your experience – the skills required for both the recruitment and development of these two contrasting businesses, are very different.

• And of course, if you want to become a Franchise Manager, you should ensure that you do gain experience of the various functions involved in the franchise business – recruitment, induction, field support, system compliance etc