5 Tips for Recruiting Restaurant Staff
One of the biggest issues faced by hospitality businesses, especially restaurants, is high staff turnover. A study by catering technology firm Zupa, which surveyed head chefs and general managers working in restaurants across the UK, found that 97% of workers said high staff turnover is a significant problem for their restaurant.
Recruiting the wrong staff, or having a lot of vacancies can be stressful and overwhelming for existing staff, which is why it is essential to have a thorough interview process to recruit the best people for your restaurant. If your restaurant has faced issues with recruitment, this blog will offer you 5 tips on how to recruit staff for your restaurant.
- Ask the right questions
- Engaging and descriptive job ads
- Have more than one interviewer
- Assess attitudes
- Don’t be one sided
Ask the right questions
Whatever you’re interviewing for, it is always a good idea to have a dedicated list of questions you want to ask your candidate. It’s all well and good winging it and assessing people on their character, but this makes it hard to compare candidates skills and attitudes against the same criteria.
Compiling a list of relevant questions or even a small task is a good way of keeping the interview on track, gathering information about the candidate that applies to the role they are interviewing for, and for gathering how much experience they have. Writing notes on the answers provided of things that you like or don’t like is also a good way to remember how you felt about the candidate and will give you better direction if you can’t decide between a few applicants.
Questions such as:
- What is an achievement you are most proud of?
- What made you most interested in this role?
- What are your recognised strengths and weaknesses?
- Tell us about a difficult situation at work that you overcame?
Have more than one interviewer
Having more than one person present during the hiring process will allow you to share notes and assess the candidate for different things. Plus, it’s better to have more people around to help with decision making, asking the right questions, and assessing the skills of the candidate.
Be careful not to have too many people interviewing however, as this can be intimidating to a candidate. Two people should be enough, with one person leading the interview while the other takes notes and perhaps chimes in with more casual questions where necessary.
Write engaging and descriptive job ads
If you want to attract the right kinds of people to your job, you need to write a job ad that captures people’s attention and makes them want to work for you. Using a section to describe day to day activities, job role requirements, essential candidate requirements and an ‘ideal candidate’ will better help filter the kinds of people that apply.
For example, if the role is for front of house restaurant staff serving high profile guests where you require a strong knowledge of Spanish wine, but you advertise the role as ‘front of house staff’, you’re likely to get a much broader range of applicants who may not actually have the experience required. Tailor your job descriptions to the kinds of people you want to work for you and with you for stronger applicants.
Additionally, including perks of the job and a pay range is good practice as an employer and will show to candidates what is on offer for this role - reducing wasted time or confusion in the interview stages.
Assess attitude, not just experience
When employing people to work as part of a larger, adaptable team, you need to ensure you’re looking at personalities that will fit with existing staff. People with a strong work ethic, approachability and good people skills can be a much better hire than someone who has experience in a similar role but lacks passion or personality.
To create a happy and functional team you need to make sure everyone gets on well enough to work together and everyone is happy to pull their weight. However, on the flip side of that, you do need to find someone who can actually do the job the right way, so try to find a balance between someone with relevant and useful experience, but also a great attitude.
Don’t be one sided
Interviewers should remember that you want the candidate to want to work for you, which means you are also being interviewed to some degree. Once you’ve finished the interview and asked everything that you need to know, open up the interview for the candidate to ask you any questions they may have. This is also a great way of seeing if a candidate has done any research into your business, what they care about most, and the kind of person they may be.
Offering this point also releases some of the interview tension and lets the candidate relax a bit, offering you a better understanding of their personality too. Taking some time after this to debrief and discuss next step action might also spark a question from the interviewee.
We can help
If your restaurant is recruiting, we wish you the best of luck in finding some brilliant candidates. Additionally, if you’re looking for ways to grow your business further with increased bookings, web searches and foot traffic, and want to learn more about marketing for the hospitality industry, get in touch with us today. We’d love to help your business achieve marketing success in 2023.
You can browse our work with our current clients here.