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Top Things Overlooked in Hospitality Hiring that Might Lead to a Discriminations Suit (Part 2)

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As discrimination in the workplace becomes more prevalent in the national eye, business owners must educate themselves on what that constitutes. In part one we detailed the obscure practices one may not associate with discriminatory hiring that could land your business in hot water, and that is barely the tip of the iceberg, as we will detail in part 2.

  1. Pregnancy

            A very touchy subject around much of the country are hiring practices when it comes to women who are pregnant. In much the same way your business can run into litigious problems by refusing to serve alcohol to pregnant women due to it being considered discriminatory, you will run into similar problems if you don’t hire women on the basis of pregnancy or imminent childbirth.

You have to treat women who are pregnant in the same way and employer treats other applicants or employees with temporary injuries or conditions that might affect their job performance. This means that you must modify their tasks or have them do other assignments around the workplace, or if it gets really bad, let them take disability leave until they are able to work again

  1. Age

This is a major factor in hiring and employment that most business owners wouldn’t even consider. If older prospective employees apply or contact you about a position in your company, you are by law not allowed to reject them based on their age. An age limit may only be proposed in extremely rare circumstances where it’s been proven to be a necessary occupational qualification. In addition to this, you can’t deny any benefits any other employee might receive (I.E. health insurance) based on the prospective employee’s age.

Consider all of the positions in your business where older employees may be able to not only function but flourish, and don’t immediately discount a more elderly candidate. If you do, and this can be proven by governmental investigators, you may be on the hook for a large amount of money and further litigation.

 

Top Things Overlooked in Hospitality Hiring that Might Lead to a Discriminations Suit (Part one)

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We’ve all seen it in the news lately-racial discrimination seems rife in the nation and tensions are running extremely high. We, as a country, are becoming especially sensitive in regards to what discrimination is and how it affects us. This sensitivity is undoubtedly going to be leading to a greater amount of scrutiny into the hiring practices of employers in all industries, whether it be engineering firms or construction companies. One industry whose visibility in terms of staffing is much higher than others (and therefore will need owners and managers who are very educated on the subject) is the hospitality industry. Customers will be able to see and experience the makeup of your staff in such a direct way that differs from almost every other industry. This can lead to major problems if you are not well versed in the laws surrounding discriminatory hiring practices. These are some examples of non-intuitive discrimination that most managers wouldn’t even consider, and some tips for avoiding them.

 

  1. Discrimination based on national origin.

                  The biggest mistake hiring managers make in terms of potentially damaging discriminatory practices is thinking that discrimination ends at gender or racial reasoning. That is not even close to the truth! Take national origin discrimination: it is illegal to discriminate against an individual because of their birthplace, ancestry, culture, or linguistic characteristic common to their ethnic group.

This means that even in the simple case of you requesting employment verification for people who speak Spanish, or whose English skills are not at a level of fluency, you are practicing discriminatory hiring practices.

To avoid litigation, make sure you have a standardized hiring process that treats EVERY employee the same.

  1. Discrimination based on language

                  If you’re running a restaurant, you may want your waiting staff to have an accent that is similar to your typical customers. This may incite you to promote only English-fluent, non-accented personnel from within the business to the higher paying position of waiter. Unfortunately, this is another example of discriminatory employment practices. As long as you can understand the potential server reasonably well, it is illegal to not promote him based on their accent

When you are hiring, you have to keep in mind that the only reasons you cannot hire or promote someone based on their fluency in a certain language is due to it possibly making your workplace environment dangerous or terribly inefficient. If you give a fluency test as a requirement for hiring, make sure that fluency test only covers what language skills they need.

To be continued in part two!

TOP 3 MISTAKES MADE HIRING IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

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Hiring continues to be one of the most difficult aspects of managing and growing a successful business. A massive amount of research has gone into the subject and methods of all kinds have been created by thinktanks and scholars, yet it remains one of the top 3 objects of worry for business leaders in the U.S. While finding the perfect hiring method may have eluded us so far, it is possible for us analyze the biggest mistakes hospitality managers make that keep businesses from realizing their potential level of success.

  1. Succumbing to Panic

It’s not uncommon for business owners or managers to find themselves desperately understaffed after a previous team member suddenly resigns or acts in a way that necessitates their immediate severance. It’s in these instances that it is easiest to succumb to the pressure of your staff to hire replacements immediately to fill the holes left by the previous employees, regardless of whether or not those rushed hires are compatible with the business or the best fits for the job. This can lead to workplace instability, conflict with staff, and a lowered productivity level that can easily sink your business.

The best way to avoid this is being proactive and having a plan for staffing emergencies. It’s very easy to get into a comfortable place and fail to observe changes in the behavior of your employees that may becoming less invested in your business and their job. This is the number one sign of an oncoming opening in your staff-and you do NOT want to be caught unprepared. Always be on the lookout for people who may be interested in working for you-take down the contact information of anyone who comes in wondering if you’re hiring, and keep a lookout on employment services like linkdin and job boards around your area for people who are looking for a job in your industry.

ALWAYS utilize pre-employment checks before settling on a candidate. No matter the pressure you’re under to fill a spot, never let your guard down lest your business suffer the consequences of a lying candidate.

  1. Not Following Gut Instincts

We see it in movies and television all the time: the down-on-their-luck man or woman who goes from place to place looking for a job to no avail. If only someone would just give them a chance, they would make an exemplary employee and be a boon for business! We all root for this person, and when we see it in real life, we want to see them succeed all the more. While such generosity and empathy should be undoubtedly encouraged, we must express temperance, as it is easy to get caught up in the moment and ignore the signs we feel may not seem entirely right about a prospective employee.

The guilt we feel over not giving somebody the chance that they desperately need, or perhaps the self-righteousness and vindication we feel when we decide that WE are the ones who will give that person the opportunity can easily cloud our better judgment. Always take a step back and analyze your gut feeling about a person. It doesn’t matter if it’s the homeless woman down the street or the snazzily dressed middle class man with the impeccable résumé smiling at us from across the table, if something feels off about them, listen to that instinct. People can catch small idiosyncrasies subconsciously, and those little inconsistencies give us a sense of unease. If you feel that unease during the hiring process, that candidate may very well not be worth the chance.

  1. Tunnel Vision

As managers, it’s easy to become fixated on certain traits we believe to be imperative in a successful role fulfillment while hiring. The checklist of main personality aspects and skills that are essential to the role drown out everything else on the list of things that make a good employee. While they are important, we can’t focus on such traits to the absolute exclusion of all other things.

For example, when hiring for a sales position, we may think that the most important aspect of a potential employee’s personality may be the gift of gab and conversation. Once we find someone who can easily build rapport and close a sale, we hire them without looking at the other aspects of their personality. Once hired, though, we find out they may be lazy, deceitful, or are incapable of operating as part of a team. The same principle applies to the hospitality industry-we may hire a server who is personable, attractive, and coordinated, but they may be disorganized, forgetful, and unprofessional in their relationships with their coworkers.

Top 5 Qualities You Want In A Restaurant Host

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One of the most unfortunately overlooked positions in the hospitality industry is that of the lowly host or hostess working the front desk. Their duties, while essential, aren’t quite as sexy or overt as those of the servers, with their extensive interactions with the customer, or the cooks, who have essential roles in the kitchen. Without skillful and well trained hosts, however, order in your establishment can and most likely will quickly devolve into chaos as people are improperly seated and customer’s satisfaction quickly evaporates with lengthier waits. Poor hosts cause good restaurants to hemorrhage money, so when hiring for this position there are some key elements to a candidate’s personality that a savvy business owner needs to keep in mind.

 

  1. Situational Awareness

In the restaurant business, the name of the game is maximizing available space for seating and turnover rate. In a sector with such a slim profit margin, a lack of efficiency in either of these categories will invariably lead to losses. While the wait and cooking staff are in control of turnover rate, it’s the hosts that are responsible for the level of efficiency in seating arrangements-they control who sits where and at what time. This means that candidates for the host position need to have a highly tuned level of situational awareness. Wikipedia defines situational awareness as “…the perception of environmental elements with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time, or some other variable, such as a predetermined event.” For a member of your staff whose responsibilities include not only seating based on the current landscape of the restaurant, but being able to predict what the future seating situation will be based on timing and date, this skill is paramount to their success in the role. Hosts will need to be constantly aware of everything around them in the shifting landscape of a high volume restaurant-keeping track of reservations, cancellations, new arrivals and how their presence will affect the waiting times of customers at varying levels of importance and priority. Good hosts are not brainless automatons shepherding customers to any table that’s open, but essential critical thinkers who have an essential function in a successful business.

  1. Skilled in Emotional Labor

Emotional labor is the most readily apparent and-some would argue-most important skill set a person employed in the hospitality industry can have. Though we all know what emotional labor is when we see it, we may not know the proper term: emotional labor is defined as a requirement of a workplace for employees to display some required emotion(s) toward customers or others. While emotional labor and its importance in a restaurant may be mostly attributed to the servers, it is equally important in a host’s duties. Customer experience starts as they walk into the door, not as they sit at their table, and as such it is imperative that hosts are capable of putting on their best face for every customer. The experience of a patron will be colored first by their interaction with the host as they are seated or put in their reservation. A manager or business owner doesn’t want the atmosphere of their establishment to be soured by a dour host or hostess who puts customers into a similarly poor mood.

  1. Ability to Function As Part Of A Team

It may sound somewhat cliché, but it is an absolutely necessary part of a host’s job description to be able to operate with partners or as part of a larger whole. In high volume restaurants, it’s impossible to have a single host take on all of the role’s essential duties and expect them to perform adequately and without mistakes. It’s necessary for hosts to be able to work in tandem with others to effectively keep on top of the ever changing and increasing workload. They need to communicate changes in reservation statuses, alert others to cancellations, keep in touch with the wait staff to have an idea of wait times, and keep an eye on the seating landscape to fill in any spaces missed by their colleagues. The hospitality industry seems to e more vulnerable than most to drama and disputes between colleagues-countless numbers of restaurants have collapsed due to infighting. An ability to keep civil and professional relationships with their fellow hosts and wait staff is needed to keep your establishment from such a dire fate. Communication and professionalism is paramount to a functional restaurant that doesn’t want their system to collapse during the rushes that are keeping the business afloat.

  1. Presentation

In the hospitality industry, a consistent image, atmosphere, and style can mean the difference between a success story and failure. The staff is an extremely visible component of this style, and any incongruities can spell doom for the aspiring restaurateur. As the front line in the battle for good service, hosts that do not fit in with the rest of the establishment’s image are an especially damaging element. During the hiring process, your expectations of how a host must present themselves must be crystal clear. Their adaptability to the climate and look of the restaurant is what determines whether or not they are a good fit for the restaurant-hosts and hostesses must show that they can adapt and fit into the niche you have set for them. If they show resistance to this niche, it’s very possible that your business is not for them.

  1. Versatility

The final essential skill in a host or hostess is one that a great many business owners neglect in their hiring process-adaptability to changes in circumstance. In most businesses, the division of labor is clear and unquestionable-everyone knows their exact roles and will not deviate from them. In the restaurant business, however, the lines can-and most likely will-be blurred. Whether it is human error or in the utter chaos of a massive rush, sometimes a host needs to be able to take on the roles of other members of a team. A host that looks at a table that has needed to be bussed for an extended period of time and says ‘that’s not part of my job description’ is not a host you want to have as part of your staff. Hosts need to display versatility and quick thinking-the decision to swiftly clean a table to make room for more guests or provide some other necessary function in the workplace to improve efficiency may mean the difference between a customer leaving rave reviews and one simply leaving in disgust!

10 ESSENTIAL STEPS TO LANDING AND ACING A RESTAURANT JOB INTERVIEW

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In today’s extremely competitive job market, we need all the help we can get to land a job anywhere, and that includes the restaurant industry. You can apply to hundreds of different restaurants, bars, and burger joints without so much as cursory call back for an interview. What you need is a plan of action that will separate you from the pack. The following path from pre-application to post-interview will give you a step-by-step guide on how to maximize your efforts while looking for a position in a restaurant you’d love to work in and give you a major leg up on your competition.

 

Landing the Interview

Step 1: Do some research! What kind of establishment is this restaurant? What is it they serve? What is their theme or niche? What image are they trying to present to their customers? What kind of value do they try to bring to their patrons outside of just giving them food? Do you think you could fit in with their image? These are all important questions that need to be answered in order to maximize the effects of your efforts in applying.

Step 2: Scout out the look of those who are in the position you’re applying for. What is their level of dress? What attitudes are they bringing to the table? How do the groom themselves? How do they fit with the rest of the restaurant? If you want their position, you need to know how to act the part.

Step 3: Once you have applied, follow up! Keep on Calling and dropping by to speak to the supervisor-don’t let them forget your face or how interested you are in the position. The number one mistake people make when job hunting is not following up and just expecting the managers to do all the work in hunting them down.

Keep up these efforts and landing an interview is all but inevitable!

 

The Interview

Step 4: Remember the level of dress the people in your position were wearing? Rule of thumb is to go one level of formality in dress above them. Are they wearing business casual? Dress business formal. Are they wearing khakis and polo shirts? Wear a nice dress shirt and pants. Remember, you’re presenting your best self in this interview process. Under dressing is the worst error you can make right off the bat.

Step 5: BE HONEST. Lying during an interview will ALWAYS come back to haunt you. You WILL slip up in the lie, or forget a detail, and somebody will invariably notice. Once caught in a lie, you will never regain that credibility even if you don’t lose your job.

Step 6: Be confident and proactive! No interviewer likes asking questions and getting a flat sentence or two in reply. Relay anecdotes and stories from previous job or life experiences that pain you in a positive light. Ask them questions, build rapport so it’s easier for them to remember you when sifting through applicants later on.

Step 7: If the job provided a description of the positive traits they’re looking for in a candidate, include those words verbatim as you present yourself to your prospective employer.

Step 8: Mind your body language! Present a confident, open self with your body language by uncrossing your legs or arms, laying your hands flat on a surface (if applicable) and relaxing your shoulders. Interviewers canfeel the tension you create by presenting closed off body language and it gives them a more negative impression when they’re looking back on your file.

 

After the Interview

Step 9: Last verse same as the first! Be active, don’t force them to do all the work in remembering you. Call them and drop by to speak to the person who interviewed you. Keep your face and name on their mind as they go through more applicants

Step 10: Always be cordial, even if they decide to go with another applicant. Who knows, maybe that person won’t work out or another spot will open up and your name is next on the hiring list!

The New Year….. and the Dreaded New Hires

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The ball will drop in New York City, the fireworks will light up the sky and midnight will strike marking a fresh new year.  The start of a New Year is always a time to reflect and plan for moving forward to meet goals and grow personally and in the business world of hospitality.

With the New Year, employees are ready to seek after new jobs for a variety of reasons; hirer pay, better hours and so forth many looking elsewhere due to a holiday burnout and exhaustion.  Much like hiring managers and business owners, employees too are ready for a fresh start for the New Year.  Some employees will stay and overcome the burnout feelings, but others will leave and take on positions to move their career ahead or in completely different directions.  Regardless where some employees may end up, you may have to hire.

Hiring is known to be one of the most dreaded experiences for business owners – from compensation to benefits and training, there’s a lot to consider when hiring if you plan to meet success head-on.

Some hospitality industry experts believe it’s harder than ever to staff – The hardships come from the fact that more people are looking for jobs because of the status of the economy, but there are less people with experience to hire. The ex-sales manager, teacher, lawyer, etc. are looking for any position, even if a complete career changes. Less experience doesn’t always count as a disadvantage, but sure can lead to longer trainings and more direct management needed until they have significant industry experience.

Similar, experts say employees formerly accepted one job and kept it for years, even decades – a sense of pride developed over time about the company they worked for and how they advanced. Today, more than ever employees are exercising their rights and embracing their inner adventure spirit and moving from job to job taking higher pay, better hours or whatever fancy they may be lured in with during the hiring process. The average time a candidate spends at one job in the hospitality industry is six months or less.

Harder now than ever to hire or hiring with ease, with our years of experience and understanding of the Pacific Coast Region, resolving to hire Pacific Coast Hospitality to handle your staffing and placement needs during 2015 will be one of the top things you do to ring in the New Year!

Job Seeking During the Holidays

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The hustle and bustle of holiday shopping, decking the halls and job-hunting too?  It’s the busiest time of year and most job seekers are taking a backseat to submitting resumes and attending interviews until after the New Year.

It’s often believed employers are just not hiring during the holidays and of course, by now the holiday hires have been placed, but employers are planning and hiring for the new year.  With less competition in the job search, now’s not the time to count out applying for positions.  As the New Year begins, employers look forward to a fresh start- that often includes fresh hires.  

  

Finding Job Openings During the Holidays: 

Amongst the holiday season is the perfect time to re-connect with those you know who may have leads to open positions.  Maybe your former boss and co-workers? Previous roommates or your child’s previous teachers, sports coaches, etc. Networking is the best way to find open positions and get an interview.

 Work this holiday to expand your network by connecting with a top notch recruiting firm, like Pacific Coast Hospitality, and let us know you’re job seeking.  Check our latest job board and apply for any positions you may be a top candidate for!

Likewise, attach your most recent resume to an email and send us a little hello and happy holidays. We’ll be sure and get connected with you and assist in any ways we can!

Most often it is in the unlikeliest places that each of these connections lead to jobs.  A proactive job search is sure to be a successful one.

Interviewing for Open Positions During the Holidays:

The holidays are a perfect time for a job interview – from the happiness that comes with the season to the more laid back office environments that naturally creep in, a holiday interview has its perks.

One of the easiest “ice breakers” for conversation and first impressions is to discuss the cheer and chaos of the season.  Whether it be complaining about long lines or complementing the light display at your local zoo, it’s a fool proof conversation topic for an interview.

During the holiday season, as many are not applying, companies are “all hands on deck” to prepare for the new year launch.  Be part of the fresh start by applying for jobs during the holiday rush and kickstart your New Year right.

Hire Right – Hiring Science and Psychology Ideas

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It’s no secret or rocket science discovery that humans shift their personalities and emotions to cater to individual situations and to bring forth specific reactions. In essence, as humans, we are manipulative even when we don’t know it.

 

Emotions and actions can change in a moment and during the interview process it can often be hard to know what and who someone actually is.

 

Long after the interview and hiring is over, many business owners realize their hiring mistakes and regret their decision. Hiring is costly. Turnover of employees is even more costly – from training to replacements, the money adds up when you don’t hire right the first time.

 

For hiring science, and psychology in particular, have plenty of ideas to offer on how to hire the best candidate for your open position. So many, in fact, that the British Psychological Society’s Occupational Digest blog was able to kick off 2012 with a round-up of recent findings applicable to entrepreneurs looking to select new talent.

 

Skip reading the full findings, we’re here to sum up the key two points:

 

Back to the humans shift their personalities and emotions to cater to individual situations and to bring forth specific reactions – therefore, what you might have heard or what are standard best hiring practices don’t really matter. In an interview it’s not hard to fool what knowledge may really be known or how a candidate truly acts in stressful situations. During an interview, you really see the best of candidates. Assuming the polite manners or the candidates with the highest education may not be your best hire. Sticking to best hiring practices of education and formalities could lead to a hiring mistake in the end that could have been avoided if when hiring you focused less on the what’s supposed to be right and more on the realities.

 

Hire the candidate you feel has previous experience working hard and the one that will be a good cultural fit to the work environment.

 

Hiring mistakes often happen when there’s a skills gap. The good news is, this hiring mistake can be avoided just by simply requiring specific skills test for the job available.

 

Likewise, consider a working interview – there’s no better way to examine skillsets than to see them in action first hand. You’ll be sure to see the reactions of a candidates when working and better understand how they handle stressful situations, rapid changes and others personalities.

 

All in all, science and psychology prove again and again that following your gut feeling usually doesn’t lead astray. Examine what happened with each candidates first impression and how they would fit with the team on a daily basis. Did the candidates posses confidence or a lack of caring for receiving a job?