Aspiring Starbucks Corp. baristas now have to go through an additional layer of interviews to land a job as part of a new hiring push by Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol.
As of early June, external applicants must be screened by district managers in addition to the manager of the store where they’re applying, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. District managers normally oversee about 10 locations and weren’t previously part of the hiring process at the store level.
Starbucks is bulking up staffing as Niccol pushes to revive sales in part by speeding up service. It’s a reversal of past years where the coffee chain cut the average number of store workers. Starbucks has said that nearly all of its more than 10,000 company-operated locations in the US will get more workers by the end of September.
Starbucks declined to comment beyond what executives have previously said about hiring plans.
Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams told store managers at an event this month in Las Vegas that “everybody wants to work at Starbucks, but only the best people should become ‘partners,’” the term Starbucks uses for its employees.
Under the new system, district managers can conduct interviews virtually or assign a proxy so the hiring process doesn’t get held up, one of the people said.
Niccol, hired last year to turn around a sales slump, has said that Starbucks struggled in part because decision-making was too divorced from the day-to-day store operations. The company aims to create a pipeline of talent so that within three years, 90% of retail leadership roles — including store and district managers — are internal promotions.
At the Las Vegas event, Starbucks also pledged to appoint at least one assistant manager at most of its company-operated US locations so store managers could spend more time on tasks such as recruiting and managing schedules.
Baristas have long decried what they see as understaffing, and labor has been one of the key demands for the union that represents about 5% of US company-operated locations. Starbucks said in December that it’s focused on improving the worker experience and that its average hourly pay is competitive at more than $18.