HOSPITALITY RECRUITMENT TIPS
Attracting the right talent in hospitality recruitment can be a challenge. These hospitality recruitment tips can help your restaurant, hotel or lodge attract the perfect job candidate ahead of the competition.
Be clear about who you want to see in the job.
Create a person description as well as a job description as some personal traits you simply cannot train. Front of house hospitality is all about customer service and simply put, you cannot teach someone to smile, have warm body language and good eye contact.
Put targeted key words in your job advertisements to week out the people that you are not looking for. Examples could include: Must have experience in a 5 star hotel with over 100 rooms or must have very high energy levels and be able to work overtime as and when required by the restaurant.
The ideal interviewing panel is 2 people. It is not intimidating and also looks professional. Use this rule with virtual interviews on Skype or Zoom too. In that way one person can ask most of the questions, and the other can take notes. Note taking is essential should any job applicant ever question the equality of your hospitality recruitment process.
For this reason, it is also important to rate the job candidates with a numerical score. Ideally this should be done against each competency assessed and then an overall score. Whilst this is best practice in terms of equality, it is also possible to forget candidates if you are interviewing in large numbers.
Reference checking is essential. Check the length of time that they worked there correlates with what was put on their CV, as well as their job title and salary package details. The big question is of course, would you re-employ them and why.
Once you have made your decision on which candidate you would like to offer the job to, ring them immediately. Top level candidates will always be in high demand so don’t lose them to a competitor because you are dragging your heals or letting the recruitment process drag on and on.
Once your hospitality candidate has started in the job, remember to follow up with them and give and receive feedback. Have a sit down with them on their 3rd day to check in to see how things are going.
Following these simple hospitality recruitment tips will go a long way in helping you build a successful hospitality team in your establishment.