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The Complete Guide to Hiring for Your Restaurant

Running a Restaurant is more than running a business. It’s providing an experience for your customers that hopefully builds loyalty and trust.

Your employees are the face of your restaurant and help create that dining experience. From your hosts to your wait staff to your cooks and bartenders, your employees are the face of your restaurant.

Hiring can be tough for any small business, especially restaurants. Not only is finding great employees a challenge but keeping them around in a high-turnover economy can be even harder.

Building a restaurant hiring plan involves a few factors: Marketing your business as a great place to work, creating job postings that bring in quality employees, and following a hiring process that attracts staff that’s ready to jump in.

Marketing Your Restaurant as an Employer

Technology has vastly improved recruitment and hiring methods for all industries. Today, you can do more than placing a Now Hiring sign in your front window.

The first place to market your jobs is your website. Not only can your restaurant website serve as a great place to attract customers, but it can also communicate open positions.

Your website is also a static location to list your general employment benefits and information. What’s it like to work at your restaurant? What do you offer your employees that other restaurants don’t? (Psst! Offering an employee management software like Homebase benefits both you and your employees. Not only is scheduling a breeze, but simple timesheets, team communication, and payroll make life much simpler for your team. Check it out now to give candidates another reason to apply for your jobs!)

Secondly, leverage your social media for hiring. Alongside posts about your new menu and current events, share updates on new positions and employee culture. Again, you never know which customers may also be looking for jobs.

Lastly, check out dedicated recruitment sites for yet another place to post your jobs. Websites like the National Restaurant Association, CareerBuilder, and iHireHospitalityServices have job boards on which to share new positions. Also, network locally by joining your local American Culinary Federation chapter. Most ACF chapters are full of great students and recent graduates ready to work.

Writing Job Postings that Attract Quality Employees

Managers in all industries struggle with the issue of hiring quality versus quantity. When you post a job, you want a lot of people to apply. But at the same time, the application review and interview processes can feel tedious if you’re merely crossing off worthless applicants.

When you’re faced with less-than-quality candidates, it can be tempting to hire just to get it done.

But moving forward with poor candidates can actually cost your business money. In fact, replacing “bad” hires can cost your restaurant up to $20,000 per manager and $2,000+ for hourly employees.

Avoid talentless turnover by positioning your open jobs to attract quantity and quality.

Take a look at your job listing. Is the description detailed enough to tell candidates precisely what they’ll be doing day-to-day? Do your qualifications include specific numbers instead of general wants? (For example, it’s better to say “Served as a waitress for 5+ years” instead of “Experienced waitress.”)

Lastly, review your section about company culture. Nowadays, more people in the workforce care about the environment in which they work. Use your job listing as another place to market your restaurant as a place of employment. It’s not only about you attracting employees; it’s also about making employees be attracted to you.

Another way to leverage your job listings to weed out unqualified employees is to ask a few questions. Depending on which position you’re looking to fill, you may ask questions like “What’s your approach to dealing with a rude customer?” or “How long does it take to cook a steak to medium rare?”

Not only will these questions give you an idea of a candidate’s knowledge and experience, but it’ll also turn away applicants that are too lazy to answer.

Conducting Interviews that Reveal the Best Staff

So, you’ve marketed your restaurant as a great place to work and attracted a long list of quality applications. These folks may look great on paper, but how do you assess and discover the very best candidates? The goal here is simple: Hire to avoid turnover.

Interviews are crucial when hiring restaurant employees. A candidate with numerous skills on paper may not be friendly or outgoing enough to greet customers as a hostess. Likewise, an applicant with little to no experience may have the perfect attitude for a bartender. You never know if someone is a good fit to work at your restaurant until you meet them in person.

Review your interview process. Firstly, are you asking the right questions for the job? Sure, you may ask everyone the standard questions on hospitality, conflict resolution, and customer service, but make sure most questions are relevant to each position. For example, if you’re hiring a server, inquire about greetings, entree delivery, and menu memorization. If you’re hiring a head chef, ask about food preparation, menu planning, and team management.

Secondly, are you conducting the right “tests” for your candidates? It’s one thing to ask questions, but it’s another to put each applicant on the spot as a pretend hostess, server, or bartender. Seeing each candidate in action may give you an idea who’s qualified and passionate…and who’s not.

Final Thoughts

Your employees are the face of your restaurant. Regardless of your menu, they can make or break a customer experience. To cultivate quality customer experience and excellent employee culture, you should hire for attitude as much as you hire for skill.

Make your restaurant hiring process easier by marketing your jobs widely, writing your job postings correctly, and interviewing your candidates thoroughly. Following this game plan will help your restaurant succeed through your staff!

The post The Complete Guide to Hiring for Your Restaurant appeared first on Homebase.



This post first appeared on Small Business Tips And Tricks - The Homebase, please read the originial post: here

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The Complete Guide to Hiring for Your Restaurant

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