The HR course gate
Before you can employ a single person, you must complete the Basic HR course at the Manhattan Business School. It costs $30 per hour and takes ten hours total, but the investment is mandatory: no HR course, no hires. Do it early, because every later expansion depends on having staff. In Custom Game the difficulty sliders can change wage pressure, but the course requirement remains.
Employee roles
The game's employee types cover both storefront and headquarters functions:
| Role | Works at | Key function |
|---|---|---|
| Cleaning | Any store | Keeps the store presentable; every worker also has cleaning skill |
| Customer Service | Retail | Serves customers, supports satisfaction |
| Lawyer | Law firm / office | Handles legal clients, one at a time |
| Purchasing Agent | HQ | Negotiates importer discounts; one per importer contract |
| Logistic Manager | HQ | Routes warehouse-to-store deliveries; one per warehouse |
| HR Manager | HQ | Trains and manages staff schedules |
| Delivery Driver | Warehouse driver bay | Drives vehicles on delivery routes |
| Programmer | Office / HQ | Supports web and tech businesses |
The 1.0 update adds a Pricing Manager role at headquarters, who can set retail prices per product and update an entire district's prices at once.
Where to recruit
Storefront staff such as cleaners and customer-service workers come through recruitment agencies, where you can review each candidate's individual demands, for example full-time only, refusal to work weekends, a happy boss, or a clean workplace, and decide who fits your operation. Headquarters roles like Purchasing Agents, Logistic Managers, Lawyers, and Programmers are hired at City Workforce Inc. at 41 4th Avenue, which is the authoritative address; older guides citing a different avenue refer to an outdated location. Factory Workers are recruited at Anderson Recruitment on 16 5th Avenue or headhunted through the HQ.
Training to 100%
Training is the highest-leverage people decision. Train each hire to 100% skill before relying on them; the difference in satisfaction and sales between a half-trained and a fully trained worker is large. The game provides a copy-paste schedule function, so once you build a good training and working roster you can replicate it across stores. Sleep-through-training is a known way to compress the downtime while skills climb.
Don't hire a dedicated cleaner
Every employee has some cleaning skill, so a separate cleaning hire is usually wasted spend. Let your existing staff handle cleaning, or clean the store yourself at day's end. This is a long-standing efficiency tip that survives the 1.0 changes, and it frees wage budget for customer-facing and skilled roles.
Purchasing Agent discounts
The Purchasing Agent's skill level affects the discount they negotiate with importers; a higher-skilled agent secures a larger discount on the same goods. If you sign a contract and then train the agent afterward, you must restart the contract to capture the bigger discount. Because you need a Purchasing Agent to buy from importers at all, this role is foundational to the margin gains described in Most Profitable Business.
Factory workers and output
Factory Workers are unusual: their skill level does not affect production output, only their hourly wage rises with skill. Hire them for the wage you can afford rather than chasing top skill, since the machines, not the worker, set throughput. Each warehouse running a factory binds one Logistic Manager, and each importer contract binds one Purchasing Agent.
Building the HQ team
Once you run two or three businesses, rent a headquarters and warehouse and staff it with HR Managers, Purchasing Agents, Logistic Managers, and the new Pricing Manager. This team automates training, sourcing, delivery routing, and pricing, converting a hands-on hustle into a scalable corporation. Employee happiness still matters, so provide decent workplaces and meet reasonable demands to keep turnover and satisfaction healthy.