Hospitality Hiring

Do your recruitment and hiring practices tell your hospitality story? Is it quickly apparent to an outsider that this isn’t just another job? If so, how? If not, why not?

Do you need to announce (post) job openings in the same place everyone else does? Why?

Does your culture and reputation attract the best prospects on it’s own?

Do you actively build relationships in the hives where your best prospects live/work/learn/play?

Which way to you lean with these practices?

• Application Process/Paperwork vs. In-Person/Conversation
• Resume/Q&A vs. Prospect led Presentation
• HCareers/Monster vs. Hive Immersion

Hiring for hospitality is much harder than posting a job and hoping applicants find you. It takes months, perhaps years of cultivation and nurturing of the right audiences.

Hospitality Work Available- Only Artists Need Apply

If you’ll agree that a primary goal of any company is to create an audience of loyal raving fans, then you might consider the following…

Simply making something better or cheaper isn’t effective any more. You’re not likely to own cheapest or best quality. But, you have a really good chance of being the best in your market at the delivery…the use of care, warmth and comfort as your edge. The best chance to accomplish this is to infuse the Art of Hospitality into everything you do.

I define the Art of Hospitality this way…give people more than they want, deliver it in a meaningful way, and show them you care. Please give attention to some key words…

• Give vs. Sell
• Meaningful vs. Average/Expected
• Show vs. Tell

Now, here’s the hardest and most important step to reaching your goal…hiring the artists to do the work. Recruiting and hiring an artist is different than hiring someone to complete tasks. The idea flow goes like this…

If we are here to deliver the Art of Hospitality, we require artists.

If we require artists, we don’t need people who just do jobs.

If being an artist requires passion and enthusiasm for something, we deserve to know if a person has it.

They should show us. Not just tell us in an interview.

Artists can’t wait to show you what they’ve done.

If a person is an artist, how will their art and passion help our organization move forward?

Bonus: Can they lead? Do they solve interesting problems…in an interesting way?

Pitfalls…

• Remarkable vs. Same/Fit-In
• Robin Williams Effect vs. Order Taker

Every time we have a job opening, we have a chance to hire someone remarkable…an artist. Sometimes, we settle for less. We shouldn’t…because it greatly limits our ability to achieve our goal.

Pitfalls…

• Easy vs. Hard
• Fill a Job vs. Sacrifice Short-Term Gain to Hold-Out for the Best
• Focus on Trainable (Function/Technical/Efficiency) vs. Non-Trainable (Personality/Caring/Enthusiasm/Passion/Delivery)

Interview Questions I Use to Make People Think

If you're hiring for personality, these are important questions to ask. In no particular order...

1. What are you looking to do next, and why?
2. What type of people (team) do you want to be with and why?
   
3. What would you like to learn?
   
4. Where do you want to live and why?
5. What are you an expert on? What are you the best at?
6. What is the worst decision you ever made?
7. Describe your most remarkable project/achievement.
8. How did you move your last organization forward? What did you do to move those around you forward?
9. Imagine you had your own business...what would you do to improve service, improve morale, improve the bottom line, etc.?
10.  Describe a challenging problem you have helped solve.
11. Describe a problem you foresaw, and how you helped avoid it.

I use these with all levels of jobs, from front line to senior management. As you can imagine, I receive all sorts of answers...none of them wrong. But, in the end, I know more about what makes a person tick, how they will fit in and whether or not they can help us move forward.

Hint...if you're submitting a cover letter/CV, do something remarkable and incorporate the answers into your presentation. You might just get noticed.

Let me know if you have some to add.