Ultimate Guide on How to Find Qualified Hospitality Workers

The recruitment process in the hospitality industry is changing. There are many more challenges than before, and you need to be prepared for these obstacles when you start your search for the ideal hospitality employee. Martin Recruiting Partners is here with an Ultimate Guide on how to find hospitality workers who are qualified and professional. If you’re interested in learning more, continue reading!

What fields are included in the hospitality industry?

At its very core, the hospitality industry includes any establishment that offers food and drink, tourism, recreation, and a place to sleep. These businesses include:

Hotels
Resorts
Casinos
Bars
Tourism Agencies
Restaurants

>When you hear the phrase “hospitality recruitment,” do you know what this means? Hospitality recruitment is the process of finding and hiring an employee within the hospitality industry. Open positions needed in this field include: hotel managers, restaurant management, receptionists, kitchen staff, and many more. If you are a leader in the hospitality industry and are looking to find candidates for any of these positions, you might have already discovered that your search lately has been full of disappointments. Why is that, and what can you do about it? The experts at Martin Recruiting Partners are here to help.

Why is it so hard to recruit hospitality staff?

There have been quite a few changes in the hospitality industry, which has created challenges for the hiring process. There are three main issues in hospitality recruitment today:

1. The number of candidates needed outweighs the number of qualified applicants. It’s an unfortunate reality that the number of qualified hospitality staff members needed to accommodate the industry continues to rise, despite the fact that there are not enough people applying for these jobs, and only a fraction of those candidates who would actually be suitable. Finding candidates remains one of the biggest challenges in 2021, but the good news is there are strategies that employers can implement to better reach their target audience with information about job openings.
2. It’s hard to attract applicants. Unearned or not, there is a stigma surrounding jobs in the hospitality industry, where many people think that a position at a restaurant, hotel, or tourist spot will have low pay and no room for growth. Employers need to work to combat the stereotype that these jobs are inferior in order to be able to attract applicants who can do the work. Hospitality professionals should be willing to do whatever they can to reframe the jobs they are posting so that they are enticing to job seekers.
3. This industry has a high turnover rate. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the hospitality industry has a turnover rate that is 2-3 times higher than any other industry. There are plenty of reasons for a hospitality staff member to leave their job, but the main cause for this occurrence is an issue in the job itself. Either the candidate is not a good fit, or the management is subpar. Whatever the reason, if you don’t have a suitable work environment or a well-vetted employee, you could be one of many hospitality establishments dealing with a high turnover rate.This is a situation that can often be remedied with patience and thorough vetting of employees, or sometimes changes in upper management and company culture.

Finding the right employee: A quick step by step.

There are a few things that you can do as a leader in the hospitality industry to help ensure that a candidate is the perfect fit for the job. When you are going through the hiring process, be sure to follow these tips so that you can find the right employee:

Create a Detailed Job Listing

When you are listing your job online or perhaps creating a print-and-tear poster, make sure that you are as detailed about the position as possible. What exactly does the job entail? Will the candidate be expected to wear more than one hat? Is there any prior experience needed? These are all topics you should include if you want to save time on behalf of yourself and your applicants. You can weed out unqualified individuals if you let them know upfront exactly what you’re looking for.

2. Hone in on Certain Aspects of a Resume

When the resumes start flooding in, it can seem overwhelming to have to sort through each and every one. However, there are a few basic qualities you can spot at a glance that will let you know whether or not the candidate is a right fit.

- Look at their past experience. Have they worked in other hospitality positions before? How long did they stay at those jobs? If this person regularly left within 6 months of being hired, you might consider this a red flag.
- See if there is a short bio or introduction at the beginning of the resume. People who take the time to come up with an extra line of text that catches your eye will have the personality of a worker who goes above and beyond what’s asked of them.
- Is the resume well-organized, or all over the place? How a person lays out their resume is a reflection of how put-together they are in a work setting. If you are looking at a simple, informative resume that balances white space and content, then you have an organized candidate on your hands who knows how to work smarter, not harder.

3. Look for Signs of an Interview Gone Well

After you’ve sorted through your stack of resumes and narrowed down your options, it’s time to call in your candidates for interviews. While this is perhaps the most crucial part of the process, as you are getting a feel for this person through face-to-face interaction, it should not feel stressful or forced. A great interview will feel like a conversation with someone who you could easily get along with outside of work. If your interviewee is able to balance professionalism with an easy attitude, then you have a winner.

Your candidate should be able to answer all of your questions with ease, and shouldn’t stumble or come up blank when asked about the items on their resume. They wrote those things and supposedly lived them, after all! Don’t be afraid to ask for more details about your candidate’s past positions. What did they like about those jobs? Did they dislike anything? How did they deal with difficult customers, long hours, or communicating with upper management?

Make sure that you are honest and upfront about the kind of person you are looking for when you are interviewing your candidates. Give them the details they need to determine whether or not they’re a good fit, then let them state their case. Listen to your candidates, and make mental notes of how they handle the flow of the conversation. Which applicants stand out the most? Which applicants are most approachable and professional? These are the people who will be in your final list of candidates to consider for the job.

What can you do to face the challenges of finding a hospitality worker?

There are a few things you can do to make the hiring process easier and limit your risk of wasting time on unqualified or uninterested candidates. In today’s digital age, there are plenty of online platforms designed to help a variety of industries find employees. Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, and many others have tools that hospitality leaders can use to post jobs, connect with applicants, and set up interviews. You can even go the extra mile by posting ads online for your job and generating applicants that way. While both of these are great ways to get an influx of candidates, be prepared to disregard a sizable amount of these applicants. You will get plenty of eager people who want a job, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re qualified for your listing.

It’s also a good idea to take a step back and assess your current hiring process. Is there anything you can do to improve it in a way that makes things run more smoothly? Can you delegate any of the steps to other people? When was the last time you updated your list of interview questions? Better yet, do you even have one? When you look at your current process, you should see plenty of room for improvement. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your current team for feedback either. They might have some insights into what could improve your vetting process and interview experience, as they were once candidates themselves.

While you may want to keep your hiring process in-house, there are also third-party options that you can take advantage of. If you find a recruiting agency that has the tools and experience you lack, you should definitely try them out and see how they can help improve your process.

Save Time and Effort by Hiring A Recruiting Agency

Taking the time to sit down and comb over resumes, not to mention the hours you’ll spend conducting interviews, all adds up to time that you may not have to spare. What’s worse, it’s likely that you will go through all of this trouble, only for your new employee to quit on you when you need them most. You can save so much time and effort when you reach out to a recruiting agency that has the tools needed to find the perfect candidate for your job, in half the time.

The Benefits of a Hospitality Recruiting Agency

A team of hospitality recruiters will have many tools at their disposal that regular hospitality leaders simply don’t have access to. Your hospitality recruiting agency will be able to match you with the perfect employee via an online network they use to search for and vet applicants. By the time you have candidates to interview, your hospitality recruiting agency has already eliminated unqualified applicants and narrowed down the pool until you’re left with the ideal employee.

With services from Martin Recruiting Partners:

You get matched with the perfect candidate for your hospitality listing.

As your hospitality recruiting agency, we will take the information you give us about your job listing and use this data to sort through resumes until we find a candidate that fits the description of what you need.

You save time sorting through numerous resumes.

This recruiting agency has a team of people who specialize in examining resumes and spotting the difference between a qualified hospitality employee and someone who is subpar. This process is done much faster than what you could accomplish on your own as well, so you can expect a much faster turnaround.

You don’t have to pay any fees if your new employee doesn’t work out.

When you work with a hospitality recruiting agency like Martin Recruiting Partners, you get the added benefit of not losing any money in the unlikely event that your employee isn’t a right fit.

How The Hospitality Recruiting Process Works

At Martin Recruiting Partners, before we start our search for candidates, our recruiters will meet with you and get an understanding of exactly what you’re looking for in an employee. From there, we connect with numerous hospitality applicants who are interested in a career that aligns with your job posting. We sort through resumes, connect with candidates, and narrow down our list until we have a select few to present to you, all of whom are perfect for the job. We’ll help you set up an interview, perform basic follow-up tasks, and will make sure you’re satisfied with your new employee before we charge you for our services.

Find Top-Tier Hospitality Employees with Martin Recruiting Partners

Martin Recruiting Partners is here to help make the hiring process easier. If you need to find a qualified hospitality worker for your industry, our team of recruiters are here to help. We have plenty of experience working with your industry, and have a deep understanding of what to look for when we vet hospitality applicants. Martin Recruiting Partners has been helping hospitality leaders find the perfect employees for years. As highly-rated hotel and restaurant management recruiters, we use our expertise to save you time, effort, and money in regards to the hiring process.

If you’re ready to make a change and easily find your next employee, then Martin Recruiting Partners is here for you. Call us today to get started: 678-507-5100