5 Things to Avoid When Hiring Employees for your Restaurant
Hiring mistakes can cost your company big-time. A bad hire can damage morale, hurt productivity and even cause reputational damage. More expense comes if you have to fire the person and start the whole recruitment process over again.
Use the previous steps to help bring the right candidate to the door, but be sure to avoid these next 5 things so that you don’t fall into one of the many traps that restaurants often suffer through when looking for wait staff, cooks or other employees.
1. Hiring simply because you can
Hiring someone right away just because you need to fill in the empty slot can backfire, they may just end up leaving after a week like the last person.
Before you opt to hire someone new ask yourself a few questions. Are there any internal changes you can make to improve efficiency? Can you tighten up your shifts instead of adding more cogs to the machine? Can you as the owner/manager take over the duties of the person who left?
Maybe the position is simple and you can easily take it on as one of your daily tasks. Or Perhaps an existing employee would be willing to take on more responsibility in exchange for a raise. Hiring somebody simply to fill an empty spot could backfire and end up costing you money and time as you will have to go through the whole process again to find someone else.
2. Not involving other staff members
Hiring managers or job recruiters often work separate from the rest of the staff and often have no idea about the processes that go on in the dining area or kitchen of the restaurant. They hire someone based on a checklists and don’t know the specifics that are required of the job.
Recruiters will often use the same method of hiring that they used to hire the first employee. They might not realize that the role or the skills required have also changed, or perhaps the job description does not properly represent the job.
This occurs when recruiters work isolated from the actual restaurant. To fix this have the recruiter work closely with your staff to see what is required of the position. A good idea is to have the recruiter research the job position with the staff, apply that to the candidate search, and when a handful of qualified candidates appear, bring your best staff member into the interview.
3. Hiring as a favor
Sometimes you can get candidates who are related to you, or their relatives are your best customers or the teenager of your business partner who is looking for work. This can be a bad idea if they turn out to be a bad worker, or more often than not they take their relationship as an invitation to be lazy on the job because they believe they won’t be fired because of the repercussions you might suffer.
No matter how you think about it, hiring someone who has some sort of relation to you or your staff is a bad idea.
Instead enforce hiring policies to prevent friends and family from being hired. This way you can direct them to your rules instead of coming up with reasons for not hiring them.
4. Hiring without finding out why the last person left
When there is high turnover in your restaurant, it is essential to find out why. Did they leave because of a bad manager? Is there bad morale in their team? Do you have a bad work environment? Or is another employee causing problems?
Knowing what is going on in your restaurant is extremely important to how new hires perceive their workplace, remember they are hopefully going to be working with you for a long time. First impressions are important.
You spend most of your time in your restaurant so you may be used to the company culture, but how would someone totally new react to it?
Try to build good relationships with your staff so you have a good idea of how things run when you are not around. If they feel comfortable telling you the problems in the restaurant then you can work with them to fix it.
5. Ignoring a candidate’s personality
Managers will often hire solely on the experience and skills of the candidate. This could be a mistake because the candidate may be qualified but not work well with your team. Someone who is less qualified, but has a positive morale boosting attitude would benefit you more than someone who is a detriment to the rest of your staff.
Beware of hiring someone who seems “too good to be true”. A common tactic people will use is to put on a fake persona accompanied by a perfectly fitting resume to increase their chances of being hired.
To prevent this from happening put applicants through a pressure test. Asking non-standard questions or focusing on a task under stress will often bring out their true nature and will clear up any doubts about their experience and personality.
To Summarize:
Be sure not to fall into common traps when making a hiring decision. You could waste a lot of time and money by hiring the wrong person and having to re-hire after they quit.
Keep these 5 tips in mind when hiring an employee or filling in a spot that someone just left.
- Hiring simply to fill a spot. Check to see if the open spot can be filled by another staff member or yourself!
- Not involving staff. Make sure to include staff in the hiring process, they will be working closely with the candidate so they can discern if the person will be a good fit for the team.
- Hiring as a favor. Don’t hire friends, family or relatives of regular customers.
- Not knowing why the last person left. Find out why you lost the previous employee. Fix the problems before a pattern of short lived hires becomes a thing.
- Ignoring a candidates personality. Having the proper qualifications is important, but being someone pleasant to work with is even more important.