Labor is the biggest challenge many businesses face, especially in the food service industry. There can be constant churn and the need to keep sourcing good candidates and training them quickly. In addition to this never ending process of hiring, onboarding and training, you’ve still got a restaurant to run.
All these moving parts of staffing and operating a restaurant can quickly result in overwhelm. Armed with the right information and the best process, you can make hiring a lot easier. There are three key ways to make hiring new restaurant staff as simple, organized and quick as possible:
- Get people in your network of personal and social contacts to make referrals
- Stay organized so that no candidates fall through the cracks
- Make sure every applicant has a great experience with your brand
Get people in your network of personal and social contacts to make referrals
Imagine being hooked up for a blind date by someone who doesn’t know anything about you or the person you are going out on a date with. Well there’s a recipe for potential disaster, right? That’s how it can be in the hiring process—you don’t know much about the candidate and they may not know much about you. So, you’ve got to do your homework on them and they have to do the same. This can be relatively easily done with information available on the Internet but nothing beats good old-fashioned person-to-person recommendations, which is why even after a blind “human resources hook up” you still ask candidates for references. You can increase the quality and compatibility of your candidates upfront by tapping your personal and social contacts for referrals. Presumably, people in your restaurant’s social circles, whether personal or online social platforms, know enough about your brand to know who might be a good fit. That’s why social media recruiting is on the rise.
Stay organized so that no candidates fall through the cracks
You’ve got a full time job just operating the restaurant plus you’ve got to stay on top of hiring. How are you doing this now? If you’re like some restaurant owners and managers you are still managing your recruiting process via e-mail (heaven forbid, faxing) and trying to keep track of everyone on an Excel spreadsheet. That works okay when you have five or ten candidates applying for a job but once you start to get dozens or more candidates that’s just a big headache. You probably have the empty aspirin bottles to prove it. With easy-to-use recruiting software available online, it is better to manage using a system that was actually designed exactly for what you are working to do. Otherwise, you risk missing an e-mail or forgetting to add a name and that might just be the one candidate who would have been a superstar employee. Why risk it?
Make sure every applicant has a great experience with your brand
Companies tend to only pay attention to the candidates they are actively pursuing. If you are recruiting with manual e-mails and managing with Excel spreadsheets you probably don’t have many options for communicating with all applicants without creating extra administrative work for yourself. Automate your process with software so you can let all applicants know their status. People appreciate being informed about where they stand. It feels like they are being taken seriously and respected. Applicants who have a good experience will likely speak well of you and refer others for a job in the future even if they aren’t the final lucky one.
About the Author: Eric Foutch is interested in business and productivity tips and news.
