Recruitment Resources and Frameworks: Talent Management and Outsourcing Opportunities!
By Robert O'Halloran
Work force needs, recruitment and staffing have long been significant challenges in the hospitality industry. Despite its role as the main contributor to the national income in many countries, the hospitality industry has been facing issues linked to low productivity, high turnover and limited personnel capabilities.
This issue has also been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery to pre-pandemic employment levels is still a goal. Lodging decision makers and recruitment specialists need to plan and assess recruitment and staffing models, agencies, costs, environment, morale, and the effectiveness of talent acquisition alternatives.
David Kong, former CEO of Best Western International shared "We need to all do our share to communicate that this industry can offer tremendous career progression for anyone who aspires to do bigger and better things". The concept of attracting the next generation is especially important for the sustainability and prosperity of the lodging industry. There is also the need for a comprehensive look at recruitment and selection and talent management practices. Experts recommend the adoption of inclusive talent management practices .
These practices can guarantee affording the same workplace privileges (e.g., learning chances, training opportunities, promotion availabilities, financial rewards, etc.) to all members in hotels and/or other enterprises in the hospitality sector. By definition, talent management refers to the process of identifying, recruiting, enhancing, retaining, and deploying talents. Therefore, talent management combines recruitment and development of a pool of individuals with the required skills and capabilities.
Recruitment and Selection
Recruiting for the hospitality industry has changed over the years. For example, as a young professor I remember our graduates often had three to four offers of employment before graduation (a long time ago). Today the industry needs people and utilizes significant automation and tech apps for recruitment. These efforts are helpful but are not a comprehensive talent acquisition program, noting that it is not the era of the Jetsons yet. However, a broader and more encompassing framework will go a long way to making recruitment of employees a more effective and efficient channel and embrace a model for developing career pathways.
This discussion reinforces the need to assess and evaluate the decision-making process regarding lodging recruitment models for all lodging positions. The utilization of external human resources firms for recruitment purposes is an option and has its challenges and successes. Additionally, both management and employees are concerned with the continuous need to cope with technological challenges at all levels of talent acquisition.
Hospitality Hiring Processes
In my own experience, I have hired people in, lodging, food service and education. Remembering when I started, (a while back) we did not have apps, or HR technology related human resources tools. The process for recruitment, interviewing, selection, and onboarding has gotten more complicated as the years have passed. As a restaurant manager in Southern California, we hired people from different sectors including locals, new immigrants, high school and college students, retirees, and others. We followed the rules for hiring, noting that the laws at the time did not have the same hiring rules and or proof(s) of citizenship rules as we do today.
Today, typical hiring processes , may resemble a hotel company’s central or corporate office (Human Resources (HR) Director) generally working with hotel managers and recruitment specialists who are tasked with the responsibility of staffing hotels. Historically companies hosted job fairs and advertised in the local newspapers for positions. HR departments review hundreds of resumes and online applications and after identifying potential candidates, schedule phone, and face-to-face interviews.
Today, the screening of applications can be completed digitally. If a candidate makes it to the “to-be-hired” employee stage they are required to complete Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. Noting, “The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) requires employers to verify that all newly hired employees present (facially) valid documentation verifying the employee’s identity and legal authorization to accept employment in the United States. The I-9 form , or more properly the Employment Eligibility Verification Form, is provided by the federal government for that purpose”. Candidates may be disqualified at this stage as well for failure to provide the federally required documents.
The hotel industry’s efforts including higher pay and a broadening range of benefits have improved staffing levels over the past year. However, “The hospitality industry faces a dual challenge : staffing shortages, particularly in key roles like housekeeping and front desk, coupled with the need to retain existing talent.” Additionally, Adam Robinson, Hireology Co-Founder & CEO noted, “While wage increases and other efforts by hoteliers are positive steps, we must prioritize career mobility and create clear paths for advancement to truly attract and retain the workforce we need."
The AHLA Foundation administers workforce development initiatives to help hotels fill open jobs and raise awareness of the industry’s 200+ career pathways. These include the Hospitality Sector Registered Apprenticeship program , a partnership with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Empowering Youth Program , which recruits young adults for entry-level hotel positions and works with community-based organizations to empower them with training, tools, and support that will lead to permanent careers in hospitality. Ultimately the goal of sustainable human resources practices means, investing in employees . The industry is still about 200,000 jobs short of pre-pandemic levels.
Staffing Resources for Hospitality
Staffing and recruiting software help hotels streamline hiring, cut down time-to-fill, and attract top talent in a highly competitive labor market. These tools are designed specifically for hospitality teams, making it easier to source, screen, and onboard employees whether you’re hiring seasonal front desk staff or building a long-term leadership pipeline. For example, The Hotel Tech Report provides an overview of effective HR and staffing tools. These are inclusive of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS ), that can support candidate screening and filtering, mobile apps, automated communication, digital onboarding tools, reporting and analytics (metric generation), interdepartmental management, and integration with payroll.
Other recruitment options/tools can include: Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) which means entrusting responsibility for the recruitment process for selected or all jobs to an external supplier. It includes finding optimal ways to attract job candidates and process applications for job interviews. In an editorial shared by Inc.com (2020) , the use of temporary employment grew rapidly in the 1980s and early 1990s during the trend toward business downsizing and restructuring, in which many companies reduced the size of their core work forces. Companies began to substitute temporary for permanent employees for cost savings in payroll administration and fringe benefits, and to gain greater flexibility in the face of changing business conditions.
Additionally, staff training programs must be especially engaging, for temporary staff. Training programs need to be effective and have immediately efficient and productive results. The economic and demographic forces that had stimulated growth in the temporary staffing industry as an alternative to hiring permanent employees are not likely to change soon despite the pandemic crisis. Working with employment agencies has been and can be a great route into a long-term hospitality career, as well as an effective way for employers to recruit full-time staff. Yet agency workers may not see the hospitality industry as a viable career choice.
Hospitality professional trade associations, like the American Hotel & Lodging Association and the National Restaurant Association and their industry leaders have and continue to promote, these sectors as professional career choices, full of opportunity. For example, John Russell, a long-time industry veteran, stated that corporate efforts will be rooted in R.O.A.R—Recruit, Onboard, Add value and Retain. “R.O.A.R is vital to our effort of heading back to basics.”
The low-cost services provided by RPOs (recruitment process outsourcing companies) are possible due to the substantial number of candidate databases these recruiters hold and the tools and strategies these companies impart to identify the best resources with less investment. Targets based on performance are specified between an RPO and a service provider and are aimed at increasing the quality of service.
In certain cases, the monetary agreement is based on performance targets wherein if provided the best service, the agreed fee will be paid by the client organization. Hence, the effectiveness of recruitment plays a vital role in the RPO industry. The general principle of RPOs is denoted as “RPO= Hire Capability+ Hire Value.” Organizations, however, decide to outsource recruitment because reaching candidates with the right qualifications is challenging while recruitment itself is a highly complex process. The issues in question are the effectiveness of the process and the optimization of work performance.
Temporary employment services are a particularly attractive option for small businesses, which often need help on a limited basis but lack the resources to recruit, screen, and pay new, full-time employees. A small business considering the services of a temporary employment agency should first consider several factors:
1. Gauge Need
Business owners should examine production schedules, composition of employee benefits (number of sick days and vacation days, etc.), and seasonal workloads.
- Assess quality of customer service. "Check the quality of the work not just during the times when employees are covering for another worker, but on a regular basis."
- Put an effective screening process in place. Though minimal screening is acceptable for low-level jobs, the process should include more sophisticated screening methods—such as personal interviews, computer testing, or psychological evaluations—for positions requiring specialized skills.
- Evaluate potential temporary staffing services. Business owners should seek out recommendations for temp services from other members of the business community.
- Establish partnership with the temp service. The temporary services firm your company selects should be able to evaluate the client company’s requirements, timeline, budget, and working environment, and provide temporary employees who have the appropriate skills, availability, and personality to meet its client’s needs.
The Hotel Tech Report , as previously noted, also shared a process for recruitment and hiring temp employees using staffing networks:
- Create Your Account & Set Up Your Property Profile: Some platforms offer templates for hotel roles.
- Post Jobs with templates and or job descriptions. Utilize integrated job boards (e.g., Indeed, ZipRecruiter).
- Screen Applicants.
- Schedule Interviews with scheduling tools or automated communication.
- Hire & Onboard
- Track & Improve: use built-in analytics to review what worked (or did not), optimize job posts, and improve future recruiting efficiency.
2. Pricing Considerations
Hotel properties and the recruiter team, needs to also be aware of recruiting technology costs for hotels. Pricing typically follows one of three pricing models : per job posting, per user/month, or custom enterprise pricing for multi-property groups. Some platforms charge flat monthly fees, while others use a usage-based model depending on the number of active job listings or hires made.
A property’s research should also include an assessment of fit for temporary employees into the scheme of operations. This process can be assessed by answering basic questions. Are the temp employees reliable? Do they start work on time?, Are they productive to standard?, What training or upskilling will be required for these temp employees?, How many temp employees are needed on a daily basis? How will this be determined? utilizing staffing guides? And finally, what are the criteria to be used to judge need, quality of work, productivity, and value of the hire? That is much to assess but the assessment of temp employees needs to be calibrated with the quality of service provided to guests.
Going Forward
Hotels, restaurants, resorts, and event venues often seek out hospitality recruiting agencies. These businesses often need help addressing staffing shortages , managing seasonal workforce demands, and finding skilled professionals quickly. Talent acquisition in the hospitality industry comes with unique challenges. Constant turnover and the need for specialized skills can leave your team stretched thin.
Hospitality recruiting and staffing agencies can help by connecting HR with qualified candidates, saving time, and reducing hiring stress. You and your team will need to assess the options for recruiting companies, and focus on what services they provide and what is their reach and scope in terms of levels of service for management and staff?
Do your research and identify options and be aware of price for their service. In creating a rubric for recruitment, you can adjust the weights to fit your priorities. Assess your priorities by outlining the key factors you will evaluate, the agency business objectives, range of services, support program, costs, communication plan, and overall industry experience, reputation and quality of work and flexibility. Wai offered a scorecard of sorts that can be applied to your own property when assessing services offered. Her scored card presented like a rubric (a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests) of their services, and in this case you are doing the grading. Her rubric included the following:
Hospitality Recruiting Agencies Selection Criteria (Rubric)
- Core Services (25% of total score): Candidate sourcing and vetting, Job placement and matching, Temporary and permanent staffing, Industry-specific recruitment, On-site staffing support.
- Additional Standout Services (25% of total score)
- Industry Experience (10% of total score)
- Onboarding (10% of total score): for example, the speed of placement.
- Customer Support (10% of total score): Availability of support channels and responsiveness.
- Value For Price (10% of total score): Evaluate pricing and potential ROI.
- Customer Reviews (10% of total score); Like satisfaction scores.
Recruitment and University Graduates
In my current position I have worked regularly with industry recruiters via traditional careers fairs, company days on campus and even virtual recruiting, was prompted by the pandemic. When I think about recruiting from university hospitality management programs, I consider the jobs being offered, what we as a university have done for each graduate’s education and the key takeaways that a program via its academic opportunities have provided.
Similarly, that model could align with the concept of upskilling in industry. Upskilling per some research involves costly effort on behalf of existing employees to acquire new skills that are required to execute high value‐added projects. On the job, where it is a business organization’s requirement that the training be completed, the employer needs to provide the resources to get the need training.
College students or future graduates are paying for their education. Therefore, a company, when the graduate applies for a position, is the beneficiary of their academic and experiential learning. Our graduates are offering upskilled candidates for the benefit of the company and the employee. For example, most programs require that all students, complete an internship and work experience hours. The premise is that the combination of internships and the academic program makes the graduate very hirable.
Offering a unique curriculum of educational opportunities helps to set a baseline of competence and ability. University programs cannot prepare all students for every situation. However, institutions should strive to prepare its graduates to be life-long learners and be ready to learn new applications, new work models, added information, new techniques and be ready and willing to adapt to change and be flexible enough to succeed.
If the pandemic did anything positive, it alerted us to the flexibility and fit of our graduates and students have in related service industry positions. When the pandemic effectively shut down many of the lodging and food service businesses across the country, we discovered that our many of our alumni successfully migrated to multiple lines of business including, retail businesses including grocery, sporting goods, and clothing. We also identified alumni working in healthcare management and human resource management.
For example, at a virtual career fair, we had a brand paint company register as an employer in hopes of hiring entry level graduates. I reached out to remind them that we were a hospitality program, and they said, they knew who we were and had met and interacted and hired graduates from our program, who had and were performing successfully. We re-discovered the flexibility and applicability of our graduates.
This should also alert our industry that they through a collective effort need to win their former young managers and employees back. Throughout, this discussion, we have touched on talent management, upskilling, career pathways as well as utilizing recruiting and staffing agencies and more. Our efforts need to be to offer people career opportunity through employment in the hospitality and tourism industry. Looking forward, I suggest that the questions below may help to frame the future of the industry workforce and hospitality business education.
- Will the hospitality industry need large numbers of our graduates and or entry-level managers in the future?
- Is technology going to play a more prominent role in providing service?
- What will the skills set be for successful managers and or those entering the management ranks for the first time?
- How will recruitment be changed, and will the industry be more competitive for desired jobs?
These questions are important for the future of the hospitality industry and the future of Hospitality Leadership Education. We can seek the answers together!
Prof. O'Halloran
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