Recruiting Is About Quality Hiring, Great Service and Efficient Cost
By Robert O'Halloran
Doesn’t it appear that everyone is hiring in the hospitality industry? Are we always hiring or are there not enough people, or is it that the jobs are not those that people want? Think for a moment about the attractiveness of the industry and what draws people to it. As is often repeated a driver of the attraction for the industry, is in part, due to the fact that some are drawn by their attraction to people. The interaction, the interest etc. Guo and Ayoun noted that the opportunity for meeting new people is one of the popular reasons why individuals, particularly younger ones, choose to enter the hospitality industry. Hospitality is a high-level interpersonal contact industry where service products are created and consumed during service interaction.
You also hear discussion about people not wanting to work, I would argue that people want to work differently, i.e., flexibility in their schedules and options for remote options to accommodate family responsibilities, such as day care. Hospitality managers can leverage the characteristics of their customer groups, such as diverse customers and the existence of guest-employee exchange, as competitive advantages in recruiting suitable employees for their organizations.
The framework for this type of discussion must also involve and engage a guest service mind set as part of human interaction. The hospitality industry is ultimately a service industry. A good conceptual framework for recruiting can be thought of as the 4 Rs—Recruit,Reward, Retain, and Retire Talent . The message this article and theme sends is that HR professionals need to learn more about business, and get better at it, and business executives need to learn more about HR and get better at managing people.
Recruitment plans need to be thoughtful of service and what that means for your business. As much as anyone likes people, at some point they are going to want good service. The service industries in general are tough places as people can be demanding and insistent even if they are not right. The hospitality industry in general is there to serve, and even with service efficiency via technology a human touch is a plus. Not everyone wants to listen to a recording tell you, push 1 or push 2. At some point many people want to talk with another human being.
In general what I observe is that service has become a hit or miss. Not everywhere, not every instance but generally not what it once was and should be. Service people that mean well but forget or get busy and never come back or forget what they were supposed to do for a guest. I am old enough to remember the old saying “warm body syndrome” as it applies to the recruiting and hiring process. The warm body syndrome suggests that anyone will do as long as they breathe and can get to work, relatively on time. Believe me when I say, this is not where we want to go as an industry. If we are laying out the path for recruiting employees, a self-assessment checklist of questions could be of assistance. Some questions could be:
- Does your organization have a work force plan? Businesses should staff to the level of quality service they want to provide.
- Where will we find employees? This is a basic question, but it is also tied to where you are geographically, what is the population like, what is the age of the population? Are there colleges nearby, is there a large senior population? Where are the employee sources?
- How do we screen the applicants? It seems today the number of screening tests a potential manager must take is daunting, especially if you are applying for an entry level management position. There is some basic walking around hospitality knowledge that every graduate of a hospitality program should have and readily have, not look it up to get access to it. If I ask a group of graduates from a hospitality program (it is graduation season) some basic questions about hospitality any graduate from any university hospitality program should be able to respond answer if they are asked. Examples of this could include how to calculate occupancy percentage? Or how to calculate average daily rate? etc.. Is this too much to ask? I don’t think so! Think of it as a comprehensive examination for our graduates. I will also note that many are utilizing AI to help in their screening and recruiting tasks. Screening is important and numerous references are found via an online search, for example screening information sources include:
- https://technologyadvice.com/blog/human-resources/recruitment-strategy/
- https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/human-resources/recruiting-trends.shtml
- https://www.indeed.com/hire/c/info/recruiting-trends
- https://technologyadvice.com/blog/human-resources/recruiting-metrics-that-need-tracking/
- How do you conduct your interviews, what are your questions, how long is the interview? Are you a good interviewer? Have you ever interviewed anyone? What questions should you ask, what questions can you ask? (legally that is). Obviously, it depends on the position. Additionally, is it entry level, is it management, or a supervisor? What are the differences? AI tools are also helpful in the interview process.
- For hiring and on boarding, how does that work for you and the employees? If you hire someone, do you know they will show up? Hospitality managers need to recognize employees’ turnover intention and increase the work’s potential ability to fulfill employees’ needs, leading to intrinsic motivation and reducing employee turnover. Is yours a good place to work?
- Do you have optimal job specifications and job descriptions and other HR recruitment tools? Staffing and or hiring guides may be helpful for you to plan how many and what kinds of jobs you have and what kind of experience a new hire needs to have.
Demand for Employees: Where Have All The Workers Gone?
Workforce planning , is a process that helps to ensure the right person is in the right position at any given time. It requires an organization to analyze, forecast and plan out its future staffing needs while factoring in whether existing employees or outside talent can fill those needs. This focus on planning typically requires talent management solutions which can help make those determinations and help fulfill its business objectives.
How Do We Know When it Is Time to Hire?
Metrics can be helpful and useful tools when you are making workforce and recruiting decisions. These are the data that they are talking about when some says you are data driven. Some of the metrics that are indicative of recruiting and hiring needs are high turnoverrates . Turnover has been an issue in the hospitality industry for many years. It is amazing when you see or experience a company that has employees that have been with them for over ten or sometimes twenty years. My thinking is that it must have something to do with environment, leadership and culture and they are well compensated.
Other indicators might be needs for positions with specialized skills, remember when revenue managers were new? Or is it that your operation is always is understaffed? I can recall a popular restaurant that we have visited in a casino hotel that was still operating when the pandemic was waning and in the post pandemic era was upon us. They were always busy, and we had been unable to make a reservation. We did a walk-by of the restaurant in the afternoon and noticed there was a line to sit at the bar.
After some investigation, we realized it was not that they were full but that they had no staff. Large sections of the dining room and bar and lounge we closed off. The bar a had a smaller number of seats than it could hold. Also, there were no lounge tables and waiting lists and no reservations available. What we realized is that they wanted to give the appearance of operating at capacity because they had no staff. Additionally, other indicators of hiring needs may be the payment of overtime and guest complaints.
Workforce planning includes metrics that allow leadership to identify risks before it impacts the organization’s goals. Tools and reports that articulate the impact of decisions, so you can better manage future investments in your workforce. For example, utilizing predictive analytics can help provide a view of supply and demand challenges by location and expenses. One option may be to think about building a staffing guide based on volume levels and considering the level of service (service standards) a company wants to provide. It is also noted that technology and AI are beneficial for recruiting and assist in effectiveness, hiring quality candidates and overall cost. Recruiting strategies and my observations and input are included below:
1. Develop A Clear Employer Brand
What is your company’s brand ? Why is it a popular place to work. I can remember years ago; a colleague was job hunting and she was sharing with me some for the opportunities she was pursuing. One was with General Electric, who she referred to as Generous Electric. Obviously, she was inferring that the company has a great reputation regarding salary and benefits and therefore corporate culture. What is your company’s brand? For example, Marriott International was one of the first hospitality companies to deploy recruitment chatbots. These AI-powered chatbots guide users to open roles and even serve up relevant content to educate them on the positions. Marriott showed an alignment for technology and a different side of their culture as a current company.
2. Create Job Posts That Reflect Your Company
The advances of immediate communication and multiple channels has made some sloppy when it comes to writing, slang and what some might call professionalism. Others may also say that successful candidates need to have empathy and that will assist in building a better company culture.
3. Invest in An Applicant Tracking System
What I have found in limited research is that technology applied to recruitment efforts is increasingly popular plus effective and efficient.
4. Use Social Media to Target Talent
Social media is great , but we need to be aware of our target markets. What I have learned is that college students “don’t use email” anymore. Well, that is what they say anyway. The question is what channel(s) are effective, is it Facebook (note, Facebook is for old people), LinkedIn, Instagram, X, etc.? Know what the social media channel demographics are and does that match your company?
5. Explore Niche Job Boards
Niche professions can and do have their own job boards due to the specialization of their jobs and backgrounds required to be successful in these roles. For example, which could include technology jobs.
6. Pay to Boost Job Listings
Companies will consider these opportunities if the payoff is sufficient.
7. Revisit Silver Medalist Candidates
Candidates that didn’t get the job they applied for may be good candidates for other job postings, do not forget about them.
8. Engage Passive Candidates
A good question here is who did not apply for your job and why. Can you pursue passive candidates , who looked and did not apply?
9. Consider College Recruiting
College recruiting is an interesting thing to watch and participate in. We, as a school have recently decided to partner with the campus career services office for career fairs. What we found post pandemic days is that students were not turning out in force for a specialized career fair. The recruiters were happy, and the students were presenting themselves well, but the numbers of recruiters had declined and the number of students using a traditional career fair had also declined.
However, we were not rebuilding to pre-pandemic levels for organizations or student interest. It was also observed that industry events or job fairs hosted by local chambers of commerce and convention and visitor bureaus, in some cases, were struggling as well. Students were questioned about attendance and indicated they were already working and or had secured a job via online job sites. It is noted that the campus utilizes Handshake as its’ recruiting platform. Our placement rate remains at 100% but some recruiters and students noted they would like more face-to-face options going forward. In our case we have invited organizations to come to the campus and visit the School, present, and interact with the students. Next year our college is trying a career fair linked to the college business conference.
Another thing we did notice was that the organizations coming to campus to recruit our students, either virtually or at on campus careers fairs, had also changed. We had the traditional hotels, restaurants and other hospitality and tourism organizations but we also had some retail organizations, we had lines of business that including healthcare, grocery, human resources, paint organizations, recruitment companies and others. The connection here was the service business orientation and communication skills.
Finally, the wisdom is to consider employee referral programs and conduct effective interviews. Friends of employees, church members and other organizations typically have job boards and are possible good referral avenues. Additionally, as was briefly touched on previously, make your interviews crisp, quick and direct.
Future of Recruitment
Organizations need to offer flexibility and be more adaptable in recruitment and employment processes. As we noticed in the pandemic, people can have specialize scheduling needs for home care, day care for children etc. We also learned in the pandemic that employee’s mental wellness has become a specific benefit sought by applicants.
Additionally, technology and automation are key for many businesses to enhance their recruitment efforts. Other things to consider are reviewing your promoting and hiring from within for open positions and also being aware of diversity and inclusion in the recruiting and hiring processes. Recruitment is about hiring quality, providing service, and saving on cost through efficiency! As noted on Indeed, by adapting to restaurant hiring trends, you increase your chances of finding the best possible team members and achieving long-term success.
Measuring Your Recruitment Success
Like any other business function, recruiting needs to be assessed for its success or lack of success. The use of metrics to accomplish this can be pivotal for a business and its HR policies. Recruitment metrics for example, are measurements companies can use to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of their hiring processes. As businesses grow beyond the need for an occasional hire here and there, gathering and analyzing recruitment is essential to streamlining hiring processes.
Typically an organization views its metrics from review of its satisfaction scores, both guest and employees in some instances. They might also look at the demographics of the applicants, and where they are coming from, the quality of the candidates and hires (define quality) and ultimately the cost per hire. I will note a lodging industry friend shared with me the frustration of finding employees, especially in housekeeping. Highlighted here is a published case study that offers alternative thoughts on this process. The case presents a scenario that a hotel was constantly short staffed and ultimately considered outsourcing their housekeepingemployees . In the end they moved to a hotel development company and hired an operator for their owned hotels.
As noted, metrics can be tracked and analyzed but the question needs to be asked, which metrics should be monitored and analyzed. Consider what we want to know, where the applicants coming from, who are they?, how many do we need? And how many applied? What is the timing like, how long have we had our position posted? Companies decide which recruiting metrics to track based on their unique business objectives. There are many metrics to choose from, but layering metrics from these four categories can help optimize recruitment processes andinitiatives : sourcing metrics, candidate pipeline metrics, recruitment performance metrics and return on investment metrics. The basic premise here is that we ask, Who? What? When? Where? How? And Why?, that are questions to measure our recruitment efforts. Metrics that are indicating ineffective and or inefficient results will require rethinking of a company’s recruitment processes and work force planning efforts.
Finally, current recruiting potentially means the use of online tools and recruiting sites. Our students say these have been very useful and they are comfortable using the tools available to them. For example, sites like, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Flex jobs, NC Works, Monster, LinkedIn and others can be useful options and tools to enhance the recruitment process. In our program we also work with companies to post jobs and reach out to our current students and alumni via some of these sites. We want to be able to do is to create a sustainable workforce. That workforce should find the hospitality and tourism industry a welcoming place to engage with and build a career. It should not matter if it is in corporations, or branded operations, independents, entrepreneurial opportunities, and or other channels and allied fields like education. We want an industry that people respect and embrace and create career opportunities.
Those opportunities should be inclusive of life-long learning through continuing education, offering options that could include degrees, certificates, micro-credentials, or webinars. The Generation Z workers and leaders see these opportunities as part of their benefits or should be. There are many employees in our industry that have great experience and have reached levels of responsibility but never earned a degree but may opt for part-time and remote learning opportunities.
On the education side it is our job to help to create the next generation of the workforce and its leaders through sound hospitality business education programs on campus and online, or hybrid, offering unique educational experiences, like study abroad and global link classrooms, active and applied learning, i.e. live projects in neighboring cities and towns, with partners from the business community, non-profits and municipalities.
We need to match diverse and ever-changing positions, operational innovations, technology and new education content with our curriculums and its students who will be the next generation of leaders and managers in hospitality and tourism.
Good recruiting!
