There’s a perfect storm brewing in the restaurant industry that is wreaking havoc and with no end in sight.
Business has returned to pre-pandemic levels–even surpassing those levels in some markets–illustrating a significant pent-up demand from consumers who just happen to be flush with cash at the moment.
However, there aren’t enough restaurant workers, or workers in general, to service them. As such, establishments are running out of supplies, trimming hours or closing all together.
In response, restaurant operators have pulled out all the stops to attract more labor–paying people just to interview, giving away iPhones and French fries, offering signing bonuses and tuition reimbursement, name it. But Chipotle may have just come up with a more effective solution to get prospective employees’ attention.
The company is among the first brands to leverage TikTok’s new “Resumes” feature to recruit applicants. Interested candidates are encouraged to “creatively and authentically” showcase their skills and experiences through a video resume published to TikTok using the hashtag #TikTokResumes. Locations across the country are looking for restaurant team members on the social media site.
Chipotle’s Resumes program runs through July 31 and coincides with the chain’s second “Coast To Coast” Career Day July 15 with the ultimate goal of hiring 15,000 employees.
This Resumes pilot has plenty of potential for Chipotle considering TikTok’s influence as the second most downloaded app in the world. The channel has 689 million active users per month, who spend about 46 minutes a day on the site.
This quickly growing, vast and captive audience has caught the attention of plenty of brands. Nerf has even hired a chief TikTok officer, while Jack in the Box tapped Kyra Media as its agency of record focused entirely on its TikTok channel.
Chipotle itself was an early mover on TikTok and has had wild success with the platform. Its 2019 #GuacDance challenge generated 250,000 video submissions and 430 million video starts in just six days, for example, while its Justin Bieber challenge in early 2020 reached a staggering 95 million people.
By leveraging TikTok Resumes, Chipotle is looking for more than just reach and engagement, however. Soliciting job applicants on this channel shows the brand’s fans that it not only exists in one of their favorite spaces, but that it also takes that space quite seriously.
“Given the current hiring climate and our strong growth trajectory, it’s essential to find new platforms to directly engage in meaningful career conversations with Gen Z,” Marissa Andrada, Chipotle’s chief diversity, inclusion and people officer, said in a statement. “TikTok has been ingrained into Chipotle’s DNA for some time and now we’re evolving our presence to help bring in top talent to our restaurants.”
Chipotle is not immune to the industry’s labor challenges, so this move is especially critical to reach younger consumers who may be looking for a job, or to at least entice younger consumers into looking for a job. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the teen employment rate is at its highest rate since 2008. Those are the workers businesses are relying on to help solve the current labor squeeze, in other words.
Those workers were also disproportionately hit by COVID-19 and may therefore be eager to return to the grind. According to the Economy Policy Institute, the overall unemployment rate for young workers ages 16 to 24 increased from 8.4% to over 24% in the spring of 2020.
Those workers also happen to be on TikTok. Sixty-two percent of all U.S. TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 29.
To be sure, having a TikTok presence is not a panacea for the industry’s current labor shortages. Workers are leaving the restaurant industry in record numbers because of low pay, high risk and a host of other issues. But it does send a strong message to those who may be looking for work, specifically younger people looking for work, to prioritize a platform that is clearly very important to them.