You wouldn’t serve a sandwich on moldy bread, would you? Would you be famous for your chili if you made it with spoiled beef? Of course not. These questions sound silly because it is obvious that even the greatest culinary skill cannot produce quality food from substandard ingredients.

In a similar vein, who would deny that foodservice is a people business? The quality of your staff determines your level of guest service and produces your sales volume. The quality of your staff also determines all your principle operating costs.

Start-up staffing is the most important staff selection you will ever do. Your opening crew establishes your first impression in the minds of your market. They also influence the culture of your business for years to come. Selecting staff for a new operation is a process different from filling one or two openings. Many seasonal operations find that gearing up for peak times is quite like starting from scratch.

First, there are many more applicants to talk with. Secondly, the last-minute details of finishing construction and readying the new business for opening generate time imperatives you cannot ignore. The only advantage is that without the demands of day-to-day operations, there may be more time to devote to staff selection.

So let me give you a summary of what I have learned in 30-plus years in hospitality about how to get the right people, the first time, and how to be sure that every applicant receives a positive first impression of your operation every time.

Where do you find the best and the brightest in the first place? Turnover can be especially high in the first few months of operations, as you separate the players from the wannabes. But wouldn’t it be great to have a strong team right from the “season opener?” Here are some suggestions on how to do it.

Scouting Talent

The good people are already working, although they may not be thrilled about their present jobs. If you want talent, you have to go out there, find it and recruit it. Can you imagine a professional baseball coach, losing game after game, sitting quietly in the locker room hoping that the much-needed southpaw with a 95 mph fastball will just happen to drop by looking for a job? Of course not.

The superstars are already employed. You know the sort of folks you need. Are you actively seeking them out? They are everywhere, but they are not wandering the streets looking for work.

Business card recruiting

As you (and your staff) go about the normal activities of life, you will run into people who impress you with their attitude. When you run into a person like this, you (or your staff) can give them a business card and make an indirect approach. I suggest a comment like, “If you know of someone like yourself who might be looking for an opportunity, have them come by and talk with us.”

Good people tend to hang out with good people (and dirtballs tend to hang out with dirtballs). Even if that person is not looking for a job, they may have a friend who is. This approach also keeps you away from problems you might encounter by directly soliciting people in your competitors’ restaurants.

I know of one multiunit operator whose vice president of operations is a woman he found working in a dry cleaner. He was impressed with her service ethic and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. She learned the business and is now running his company. Where else have you looked for potential superstars?

Think about it. Compared with what we do for a living, most other businesses are deadly boring. With a population so into “experiences” as ours, don’t you think that you can find a few folks in your area who would trade boredom and a dead-end job for a little excitement and a chance to have more say in their lives? They are not going to knock on your door without an invitation.

Effective Classified ads. Newspaper classified ads are probably the most common way to find candidates for a vacancy and they deserve some attention. Here are some ideas on how to get outrageous results for your classified dollar. Pick up any newspaper in any town and turn to the classified employment ads. What do you find? “Wanted: Cook,” or “Help Wanted: Dishwashers.” Would you go after customers that way?

Any money you spend in the newspaper, no matter what it is for, is advertising for your operation. When you look at advertising like this, it automatically forces you to think before you place the same old ad. What image do your ads convey? Are you a fun place to work? Are you offering potential staff members something out of the ordinary? Your ads need to convey that.

Your goal when crafting an ad is to attract the sort of people you want and discourage the folks you don’t want. This suggests that a well-crafted and perfectly targeted ad would draw fewer, but higher quality, responses. If you think that more is better, this may seem counterproductive, but when you see how much time you free up by not having to sift through the undesirables to find the keepers, you will see that spending a little extra time on the front end to write a great ad is well worth the effort.

For example, one client complained that her servers were only interested in how much money they could make. She read me her recruiting ads and I was not surprised that they emphasized how good the tips were. When we changed her ads to emphasize being part of a team and doing something unique in the marketplace, she started drawing an entirely different type of applicant.

The lesson here is that you have to market for employees just as you market for customers. Ads that work will cost more than the three-liners that all your competitors run. If the cost is a concern, ask yourself why you are running the ads at all. If your goal is to attract the best talent in the market, the extra money is well-spent. The most expensive ads you can run are the ones that do not attract the sort of people you want.

So if you are going to advertise for staff at all, do it right. Spend a little money. Use your logo. Perhaps you can run two or three ads on the same day, each building on the others. Have some fun with it. Take a few chances. Make your ads unique and worth talking about.

Just as with your guests, there is no word of mouth without something to talk about. If workers are talking about your ads, the ads will have more effect and more people will hear about you. Just make sure that you play as good a game as you talk or you will only succeed in disappointing the hoards that will arrive at your door.

Hold Employment Seminars

A good system is an organized plan for creating a quality staff that will give you a way to separate the folks who will really do the job from the ones that just “give good interview.” Without a plan, you are just making things up. When you make it up each time, you risk making mistakes, either by hiring the wrong person or by violating employment laws. When you make it up each time, the selection process takes more time, is less effective and produces more stress. Worse than that, you do not get the best people and that is the greatest loss of all — for you, your staff and especially for your guests.

Without a plan, you are not selecting, you are only hiring … and there is a significant difference. Hiring is filling an employment vacancy. Selection, on the other hand, is the conscious choosing of a person to join your staff. Selection implies that you know what you are looking for and make an informed choice from candidates who meet your pre-established criteria.

When job-seekers arrive one by one to apply, it requires a tremendous amount of time on your part. Each will ask about the same questions, each will need about the same information and each will require about the same handling. Human nature being what it is, the first few people will receive a thorough briefing with a smile. Those who apply toward the end of the process will be lucky to receive their paperwork and a grunt. Your staff just wears down.

Why risk alienating good candidates? Why not make it easy on yourself and hold a series of employment seminars? These are group meetings where you introduce the operation, explain your goals and outline the selection process. Depending on your preferences, you could even conduct some generic foodservice training.

At the end of the meeting, distribute “Advice to Applicants” letters and “Employment Applications” to those who are interested. If you conduct the session properly, some attendees will decide not to apply, relieving you of a certain amount of work. Of those who take the material home, an additional percentage will not return it. This self-screening will save you hours of unproductive time.

The timesavings from this technique are a plus; however, the major advantage is that employment seminars ensure that all applicants hear the same message and receive the same information. This uniformity is difficult to achieve under any other format. A group meeting also creates an opportunity to build enthusiasm by giving applicants a look at their potential co-workers. If the group gets excited, individuals are more likely to get excited, too. You can do worse than having a group of excited people who want to work for you.

The owner or general manager should conduct, or at least moderate, the employment seminar. When the boss is present, it lends credibility to the process and helps job-seekers understand that the meeting is important to the company.

Effective Interviewing

Interviewing is not a natural skill, as anyone who has done it can attest, and without training it is easy to make mistakes. When several interviewers talk to a candidate without any common plan, it is often impossible to reconcile their observations. Interviewing is more stressful without a structured approach because every time you interview a candidate you have to make it up from scratch. No wonder so many people hate interviewing. In a good selection system, your interviews will also be structured. Here are a few of the design parameters:

Avoid distracting note-taking

I always found note-taking during an interview to be distracting. The interviews should require just checking a box to show the degree to which the candidate’s answer matched the desired response.

Keep it within a reasonable time frame

The first interview should only take 30-45 minutes to complete. The second and third interviews for hourly staff should last no longer than 20-30 minutes. Allow 30-45 minutes for the second and third interviews for supervisory staff. Compare these standards with your last “endless interview.”

Decide on distinct structure and goals

The interviews must be organized. Interviewers have to know exactly what qualities they are measuring, what questions they will be asking, what answers they are looking for and how long the interview will take. Then they can score each interview to give a clearer basis for comparison between candidates.

Provide clear guidelines for inexperienced interviewers

Structured interviews will allow more members of the staff to become involved in the selection process. This will relieve management of the time demands of doing it all alone, spread the responsibility for staff selection and contribute to the atmosphere of participation in your operation.

Make it simple to administer

With a structured interview, the interviewer does not have to decide what to say or worry about how much time to spend. It is obvious how the interviews are supposed to start and equally obvious when they are over.

The Starting Lineup

At first glance, this probably looks like a tremendous amount of detail, definitely more than most operators are used to. It does require a tremendous attention to detail. The good news is that the easiest time to put in place a good staff selection system is when you are starting a new operation.

In an ongoing operation, there is usually a significant amount of time required just to correct and control existing staff. This leaves less time available to devote to the selection process. When you are starting up for the first time, you can do whatever you want.

The crew that you start with will set your company’s culture, perhaps for all time, so you owe it to yourself to get it right the first time. With a high-quality staff, you will have fewer problems to deal with and more time to spend greeting your guests, coaching your staff, and having a life.

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Recruiting Opportunities

There is a world full of terrific people and you would be surprised at how many of them are looking for a good offer. The question is how to get them to want to work for you. Marketing to prospective staff members is no different (and no less important) than marketing to your guests.

If you create a strong magnet, you will pull in more good people than you can believe. As it is with your guests, nobody is likely to walk in the door if they don’t know that you are there or what you have to offer. This brings us to the subject of recruiting.

Don’t underestimate the value of recruiting. A good system for staff selection will help you identify the best of those that apply, but you still need high-quality raw material to start with. Never forget that the success of your business depends on the quality of your staff.

Never Stop Recruiting

Recruiting should be an ongoing project. You always need to be on the lookout for what Mike Hurst of Ft. Lauderdale’s 15th Street Fisheries would call a “sparkler.” This is that natural talent who instinctively knows how to delight your guests and brighten up your operation.

You cannot afford to let a “sparkler” get away because by tomorrow they will be making your competitors wealthy. The people you want may not be actively looking for work. They may not even be employed in the hospitality industry right now.

Keep It in the Neighborhood

Just as you draw guests from a limited area around your operation, so it is with staff. People are not likely to drive across town to work for you, so broad-reach advertising and recruiting efforts are usually counterproductive except for multiunit operators with good market area saturation. The more accurately you can define the market area that you draw from, the more effectively you can target your recruiting activities (and dollars).

So where are these fabulous folks and where can you find them? As a start, consider the following partial list of potential staff recruitment sources.

Target Groups

• Youth groups
• Schools
• Retirement centers (“Retired” seniors often look for employment to make ends meet, get health insurance, and find social interaction.)
• Police, firefighters, teachers, and school bus drivers (Their schedule allows them part-time jobs.)

Referral Sources

• Minority assistance organizations
• High school guidance counselors
• Down-sized companies

Other Recruiting Ideas

• Attend job fairs
• Promote jobs on company vehicles (e.g., bumper stickers)
• Promotion with local movie theaters
• Distribute a recruiting slide show on CD at your restaurant.
• Job postings on military base bulletin boards
• Co-promotion with local retailers
• Posters and handouts at local concerts that draw teens and young adults
• Kiosk or recruiting table in the mall
• Serve on an advisory board for a school vocational program.
• Host through a community center an employment seminar on working in the restaurant      business.

A Word of Warning

Even the greatest recruiting idea will not help you if your execution or follow-up is poor. For example, leaving blank employment applications with a high school guidance counselor is a great idea. However, unless you regularly stay in contact with the school to see what interest has been generated from the students, you may miss a potential star.

A good staff selection system can make this job easier. Just attach a copy of the Advice to Applicants letter to the Application for Employment (see Checklist: Systematic Staff Selection) when you leave it somewhere. This way, potential applicants will know what to expect and exactly what to do if they are interested in a job.

Systematic Staff Selection

The following are some tools and techniques to make the staff selection process smoother and with less risk.

Advice to Applicants Letter

Ultimately, your staff will treat your guests the same way you treat your staff. If you want to be the best employer in town, and you do, take great care to provide the same level of service to prospective staff members as you want them to provide to your patrons. Train your staff to greet candidates as warmly as they would welcome guests, no matter when they appear.

The process begins with an “Advice to Applicants” letter, which contains all the essential information a person needs to decide if they want to apply for work with your company. The letter sets forth your company goals, ensures that every applicant is equally informed and provides a self-screening device. Give prospective employees the letter and an application, ask them to take the material home and follow the instructions in the letter.

You do not want anyone to fill out an application on the spot. If you allow people to submit an application on the spot, you lose the self-screening value of the letter. When properly crafted, an Advice to Applicant letter will cause about 50 percent of the people to screen themselves out. This will decrease the number of useless applications to wade through. The fewer people you have to decline, the less chance that one of them will come back at you in the future for some real or imagined injustice.

Print the letter on your company letterhead. Use good paper, not a photocopy. Above all, don’t say anything in the letter that you don’t mean. The letter makes an important first statement about the way you conduct your business and should evolve as your operation evolves. If applicants find out that you talk a different game than you play, your credibility will suffer, your turnover will increase and you will just look foolish.

Application for Employment

You must have a good application, one designed for the needs of the foodservice industry. If you are using a form from the office supply store, you will not differentiate yourself from every other amateur operation in town. The application must provide all necessary information so that you can learn the applicant’s credentials. The questions give you a way to safely disengage from candidates who provide false or misleading information.

To illustrate the point and clarify the reason for some questions, here is a brief discussion of a few of the less common questions that should be on the application.

Can you read at a sixth-grade level?

Reading ability is essential to all positions in hospitality. Even entry-level kitchen workers must read food labels, chemical use instructions and receiving invoices. The dining room staff must read menus, guest checks and coupons. It is unlikely that anyone will answer “no” to this question. If you later discover that a worker reads poorly, you may terminate the employee for making a false statement on their application.

Are you a smoker?

Because there is adequate evidence that smoking increases the danger of passing along foodborne illness, most states allow you to give preference to nonsmokers for foodservice positions.

Is there any reason you could not perform all the physical requirements of the job?

Again, the obvious answer is “no.” In the early part of the selection process, give the applicant a lifting test. If they cannot (or will not) meet the physical requirements of the job, you will find out before they are a liability on your workers’ comp insurance. You can then remove them from consideration because they lied on their application, not because they couldn’t lift a case of beer.

Describe your use of drugs and alcohol.

You can ask for this information if you declare (in the Advice to Applicants letter) that you operate a drug-free workplace. Because you can ask the question, you can verify the answer. If a subsequent medical test reveals information contrary to what the applicant has provided, they can be terminated for making a false statement on their application, not because of their drug or alcohol use.

Availability information

Ask the applicant when they are and are not available to work so you will know if they are available when you need them. It will also give you a basis to terminate them if they subsequently decide they cannot take a particular shift. This solves the predicament of people who say they can work anytime and suddenly decide to become “religious” on weekends two weeks after they start work.

Work experience information

For each of their last three positions, the applicant should provide easily verifiable information (dates, salaries, duties). The application should also ask for names and telephone numbers of co-workers and subordinates. You will get a different perspective on a person’s work habits by talking to their peers and those who worked for them.

Education information

By requiring applicants to provide a phone number where you can verify their educational statements, you reduce the risk of receiving false information. Of course if verifying the statement reveals erroneous information, you have a defensible reason for eliminating a candidate from further consideration.

Why would you be a good choice for this position?

If the applicant does not believe in himself, why should you? This question allows the individual to present a case for themselves. Wouldn’t you prefer to staff your operation with people who really want to work for you?

Disclaimer statement

The disclaimer gives permission to verify all statements the applicant makes on the application. It also provides you with the right to terminate someone, either during the selection process or after they have been hired, if you discover they have made false or misleading statements. For these reasons, under no circumstances should you accept an unsigned application.

Appearance counts

Make your application stand out. Print it on good quality 11-by-17-inch paper. Fold it in half and you will have an attractive presentation that will prevent pages from getting lost. If possible, use the same paper as your letterhead so that it will match the Advice to Applicants letter. This presents a more professional appearance, particularly if your recruiting plan calls for leaving this material in places where interested applicants can pick it up.

*Always double check with your state’s employement laws first.

As competition rises for top talent, many companies are simply filling positions without following a solid hiring practice and procedure. Here are a few tips to make sure your company is getting the very best:

Do not panic hire! Filling a position, just to fill an empty position is one of the bonehead moves that are so common today.
You have to get the right people hired and get them in the right position that plays to their strengths.
If possible, try using a pre-hire behavioral screening program. The system first creates a job model, which defines the position in terms of the behavioral dynamics most likely to succeed in the job. The behavioral survey is easily made a part of the application process. These systems help managers match people to positions, increasing hiring success and decreasing turnover
Recently I had a project where I was hired to come in and work with the company’s corporate executive chef. He had not been performing up to the expectations of upper management. One of the tools I use when doing such work is a behavioral survey called ProScan. After going over the report, first with the corporate chef and then with his supervisor it became quite apparent that he was placed in the wrong position. The ProScan survey revealed that while he could perform the duties of a corporate chef, it went against his natural strengths. After discussions with all the parties involved we decided it best to move him into an executive chef position at their highest-volume unit. In the end, it was a win-win situation all around. The employee repositioned flourished. He reported reduced stress and increased job satisfaction. We created a job model for a corporate executive chef and used the ProScan survey with the new applicants. We located and interviewed a candidate with the traits most likely to succeed. So far, it’s been quite a success. The owners are happy with the new chefs results, the new corporate executive chef thrives on the challenge of the job as it parallels his natural strengths.

I have always had a saying, that hiring in the hospitality business is a lot like mining for gold. You have to dig through a lot of dirt to find the gold nuggets. However, when you find one treated for what it is… gold.

As a consultant, I get paid to produce results. Nothing is more frustrating for me then to waste valuable resources. Trust me, when you are on a week long survival exercise in Iceland and you only have food for 4 days, you appreciate the resources you have……big time.

I did a consulting project recently and the so called “director of operations” was not schooled in resource allocation. For a few hours I went along with his time wasting requests and then I reminded myself what a consultant’s job is: to protect the owner’s investment. Sometimes we also need to protect people from themselves. In this case the owner had no background in the food service industry. Let’s just say he had a more medical background. Now, I’m a big believer in “support the team you play for or play for another team”. Owners also need to subscribe to the belief that “if you don’t trust the people you hired to do their job, hire people you do”. So I had the what I call the “consultant’s reality” talk.

I explained how his operations director was tearing apart his operation and gave supporting data on the turnover and unrealized financial opportunities overlooked by his upper management team. The directors “old school” management style was not getting positive results. Sometimes the problem when companies bring in an outside consultant is some managers feel I’m there to show them up. The truth is I am an impartial observer there to get their operation back on track. The issue is one that is prevalent within the hospitality industry, they don’t think they need to change their behavior or management style. Unfortunately most managers are still using techniques that were designed for the 1990’s worker.

During the 1990s, several trends influence the way American managers did business. At the beginning of the decade, rounds of layoffs led to sweeping reductions in employee numbers. Positions were eliminated and managers were told to increase productivity instead of hiring someone for the vacant spot. Somewhere along the way, either because of excessive efforts to retain workers or because of the excessive elimination of organizational structures, managers lost their ability to lead. In an effort to remain profitable corporations asked managed to make do with what resources they had. This has led to the high burnout, turnover and low satisfaction ratings the hospitality industry is currently experiencing.

In the end, the owner of the restaurant could not see past the friendship and incompetence of his director of operations. I finished the objectives that we had established for the consulting contract and was asked if I wished to extend. It would have been easy just to stay and take the money. Unfortunately, I am a big believer in getting paid to produce results. When you take a job or a commitment, remember you’re getting paid for results. To deliver less is not fair to the owner or yourself.

We all know that hospitality professionals are working more, longer, and harder than ever before. It’s often presumed that while the demands in productivity that today’s workplace have ushered in may be good for business, they are wreaking havoc on the social and emotional lives of those in the industry. The truth, however, is not quite that simple.

In fact, each one of us has our own unique stress threshold. For everyone who starts to feel worn down and emotionally depleted after a few weeks of double shifts, there’s another who only truly starts to feel engaged and invigorated when the pressure’s really on. According research done by Professional DynaMetrics Systems if the demands of your natural energy level doesn’t line up with your work schedule, it’s very likely that you’ll reach burnout much sooner in your career.

What Does Life Balance Mean To You?

Just as each person has their own idea of what defines the perfect job, most people also have a unique conception of the type of schedule that their dream job would entail. Whether your idea of the perfect job is a leisurely part-time position with virtually no “on-call” expectations, or a demanding dawn-to-dusk role with lots of opportunities for overtime and double shifts, it’s important that you define your unique work/life balance needs and perhaps have a behavioral assessment done before you begin your next job search.

By including work/life balance priorities and your natural energy level on your list of job-search criteria, you’ll be better-positioned to find a role that you can thrive in. Here are some tips to help you land the job that will be a perfect fit with your unique work/life balance needs.

Assess yourself.
Take a ProScan survey*. It unlocks the key to your natural strengths, energy levels, leadership style and how you tend to make decisions. It also helps you identify what motivates your actions and defines your primary needs. Truly understanding yourself is the first step to finding work/life balance.
Do a reality check.
After you’ve gotten some insight into your natural strengths, make sure that they are compatible with the type of work you’re looking for. For example, if you’re the easily-stressed type who prefers a laid-back work schedule, it’s going to be very hard to find a position that meets your criteria. If you identify a potential mismatch, it may be best to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm a few alternative career directions that offer schedules more in keeping with your preferences.
Bring up work/life balance in performance reviews.
Talk to your supervisors about the priority environments that are causing stress. Remember that you place some if this on yourself (that’s called eustress). Does the company have any productivity or performance training programs already in place? Who can you speak to in getting a “life coach” to help you achieve balance?
Your work/life balance needs are as unique as your fingerprint. By pinpointing your personal motivators and needs, you can use them as a road map to help find the fulfillment you need at work and at home. It’s a smart play for companies that want to retain top talent.

*ProScan survey is a non-threatening, quick, easy and reliable tool that is one of the most advanced instruments available. It takes statistical research of working adults that accurately gives feedback to a person’s basic and preferred work styles. The ProScan survey also examines combinations of specific traits that affect how a person works most effectively and reacts to stress. The survey focuses on strengths and motivators to help employers create an enviroment that reduces employee stress while increasing energy and morale. You can get more information on other peak performance driven programs by emailing us at: dburns@highperformancehospitality.com