The hospitality industry has long faced recruitment hurdles due to perceptions of low pay, long hours, and limited career growth, and the pandemic has only intensified these challenges. We will highlight the key obstacles hospitality employers face today and offer practical strategies to attract, engage, and retain quality talent.
Summary
The hospitality industry has long been notoriously difficult to recruit for, with the perception of long hours and low pay (followed by a lack of career progression) being the top reasons many candidates stayed away.
The reverberations of the pandemic and "Great Resignation" has only made hospitality hiring more difficult. A Joblist poll found that half of former hospitality workers said they weren’t planning on returning to their previous jobs. Additionally, a third of former hospitality workers said they weren’t even considering reentering the industry in general. The consensus from these workers is that they want better pay, better benefits, and a better working environment.
The good news is that experts don’t think all is lost. Alice Cheng, CEO of hospitality job board Culinary Agents, recently spoke to Eater about the state of the industry.
“A lot of the data that we see is there’s so many people looking at jobs, more so than in the past, and they’re waiting,” Cheng said. “So, the data implies that people are looking, saving, clicking, curious, but they’re not taking action as quickly as they did in the past, for various reasons.”
Cheng’s outlook remains positive. “They will come back in waves and on their timeframe,” she says. “That’s just going to take a little bit of time. Nobody wants to hear that.”
What does this mean for hospitality professionals desperate to staff their franchises, hotels, and restaurants now? It means being innovative, rethinking how things worked in the past, and understanding how to combat the most common challenges facing hospitality recruiting.
We’ve already outlined how difficult it is to find candidates for hospitality roles, citing that low pay is a turnoff in many instances. However, our current labor shortage is forcing companies to rethink what they pay. McDonald’s is raising wages in its corporate-owned stores by an average of 10%. A Pittsburgh ice-cream parlor that doubled its wages to $15.00 an hour says it recently got over 1,000 applicants.
How else can hospitality professionals increase their applicant traffic?
Niche job boards, like the aforementioned Culinary Agents, understand the intricacies of your market. While these boards may not have the traffic of your Indeeds and LinkedIns, they put quality over quantity and ensure candidates know and want the kind of roles you offer.
Close to 90% of today’s job seekers utilize a mobile device as part of their search, and 40% of applicants won’t apply for a position if the job isn’t mobile-friendly. Promoting a posting as mobile-friendly will also improve the number of job applicants by 11.6%.
79% of job seekers use social media as part of their job search and employers are responding appropriately—a staggering 91% of all employers use social media as part of their recruiting strategy.
87% of hourly employees use Facebook as part of their job search if you're wondering what social platform to focus on.
If you’re looking for someone passionate about your brand who already has an idea of what your job entails, why not advertise to current customers? A QR code in your restaurant, hotel lobby, or menu makes applying super convenient for your smartphone-wielding patrons.
Employee referrals are 55% faster to hire than candidates from job boards! And starting a referral program (especially with HiringThing) is easy!
Once you find candidates, you want them to continue through the application process. LinkedIn found that recently, there’s been a 20% increase in job-seeker drop-offs from the application and hiring process—and Career Builder found that 60% of job candidates will quit an application that takes too long. Organizations don’t only need to work on attracting candidates but ensure they funnel through the entire hiring process.
One easy way to do this is to streamline the application and make it as barrier-free as possible. Another factor in keeping candidates engaged is establishing a strong employer brand that makes candidates excited about the prospect of working for your organization.
Dutch Bros, an Oregon-based drive-through coffee chain, is the perfect example of a company using its employer brand to continually attract and retain top talent and ultimately help the company grow. Despite most franchises struggling during the pandemic, Dutch Bros opened up 72 new stores in 2020 and has plans to open 100 additional stores throughout 2021—they’re doing something right!
The magic lies in Dutch Bros people-centric employer brand. “We’re in the relationship business—coffee is the medium,” co-founder and CEO Travis Boersma told Capital Pacific Magazine. He went on to say that he feels his job is “to find a compelling future for his employees, whether their education, their next career, their community leadership, or their future with Dutch Bros.” While this is a great soundbite for a CEO to give a magazine, this mission is apparent in Dutch Bro job postings.
“It’s fun to work in a company where people truly believe in what they are doing. At Dutch Bros Coffee, we are more than just a coffee company. We are a fun-loving, mind-blowing company that makes a difference one cup at a time.”
That’s how all Dutch Bros job applications start. They then provide wages and benefits (which today’s job candidates want to know before deciding to apply or not) and a sidebar with a company history and mission before listing qualifications and responsibilities. Dutch Bros gets how critical exciting job applicants is to attract quality job candidates.
Want more ideas for increasing your franchise's applicant traffic? Check out Increase Your Franchise's Applicant Traffic Today.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found the turnover rate for the hospitality industry is 2 to 3 times higher than the rate of all other industries.
31% of employees quit new roles within the first six months, and a top reason is a poor onboarding experience. Ensure that your hiring to onboarding process is a seamless experience for candidates and that they remain excited and engaged with their new role through their first 90 days (and beyond, obviously, but 90 days is industry standard for “onboarding”).
The top reasons for employee turnover include unclear job expectations, unclear communication, and lack of growth opportunities. Be as transparent as possible during the hiring process so that the employee’s role is what they expected.
We already discussed the importance of an employee referral program, but did you know employee referral programs also reduce turnover?
The HiringThing Guide to Increasing Your Applicant Traffic is a great resource for more ideas on improving your hiring process, including ways to combat turnover.
A challenge often unique to the hospitality industry—restaurants, hotels, franchises—is that you’re often hiring for multiple locations. Ensuring consistency and automation across locales could be challenging.
Multi-location hiring software like an applicant tracking system ATS can help!
An ATS is built to ensure that all job candidates get the same branded hiring experience. It streamlines and automates the hiring process so that your job candidates walk away wowed.
HiringThing customers can take advantage of applicant pooling. Applicant pooling allows you to share applicants across different job postings (and locations) within your account.
The earlier linked Caterer article reports how finding quality talent has always been a challenge for hospitality hirers—Indeed finds that across industries, half of employers say their top hiring challenge is receiving too many unqualified candidates as applicants. Many employers in the hospitality field have long coasted on the “warm body” strategy—ensuring a role was filled with anyone, quality of employee withstanding—which doesn’t work in today’s hiring climate. Fewer people fill more roles, so quality vs. quantity is the new-hire metric to strive for.
The competition for quality talent in the hospitality space is fierce, so companies might need to appeal to what their ideal job candidate is seeking. A Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association survey found that 57% of business owners said they were offering more flexible scheduling, and 57% said they were offering some sort of sign-on bonus.
Do some candidate research, see what perks and benefits your ideal candidates seek, and do your best to fit them into the recruiting process. If you provide the work environment employees seek, you’ll most likely see your applicant flow grow.
In the past, hiring decisions often came down to gut feelings, leaving room for bias and blindspots. With all the technology available today, forward-thinking hospitality hiring managers are utilizing digital tools like data analytics or skills surveys to analyze potential talent for soft skills, growth mindset, and the right temperament for a stellar employee.
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are recruiting software used to automate, streamline, and strengthen the hiring process. Applicant tracking systems can help hospitality hiring managers set parameters for what kind of candidate makes it through the application process to the hiring process. You can require applicants to have specific experiences, training, or keywords in their application. Applicant tracking systems can be designed to ensure only candidates you deem quality are coming through to hiring managers. Additionally, most competitive applicant tracking systems will have integration partners that can help you analyze talent for potential.
A private label applicant tracking system, like the one we develop here at HiringThing, is sold to franchises and multi-location businesses, customized with their branding and pertinent workflows, and then presented as a proprietary technology solution to strengthen that employee brand you’ve worked so hard to cultivate. Check out our post What is a Private Label Applicant Tracking System? Learn more about how a private label applicant tracking system can help your hospitality hiring.
The unfortunate reality is that the hospitality industry has an image problem: the perception is low wages, long hours, menial tasks, and little opportunity for career advancement (more on that later!). The hospitality industry is often referred to as the service industry, which brings up connotations of being less than the customers they serve. Hospitality hirers must present their open roles as those requiring talent, pride, and passion, even for entry-level roles!
Employer branding is what current, former, and potential employees say about how you are as a place to work. Today’s job seekers care about the values of their employer and the workplace culture they’ll be entering—78% of job seekers say the interview process showcases what the company values and how it treats employees.
Hospitality employers can and should use job postings and interviews to engage quality talent. Consistent messaging clearly defining company culture and a greater purpose is a recruiting game-changer. Actionable ways to showcase a strong employer brand include:
One of the most damaging stereotypes hospitality jobs must contend with is that they are dead-end jobs with no room for advancement. Upward mobility is essential to job seekers across all industries—today’s top reason for switching careers is lack of career advancement—so we felt this particular (untrue) stereotype warranted its own section.
Learning and development are more critical than ever to job seekers, and employers are responding appropriately. One key challenge hospitality employers face here is how reliant the industry is on entry-level and hourly employees, who have often been traditionally overlooked regarding professional development and upward mobility opportunities.
In an SHRM article titled Engagement is Important for Hourly Workers, writer Susan Milligan says, “Make hourly employees feel they have a future at the company. Good hourly workers may be great long-term, salaried employees, so find out who has in-house career aspirations and help them achieve that.” This can apply to non-hourly entry-level positions as well. It’s important to foster engagement among your hourly or entry-level staff and to truly believe there’s potential for great, long-term team members.
Hospitality organizations can meaningfully nurture their internal talent by:
MarketWatch reported that a cashier at a quick-service restaurant open fifteen hours daily costs more than $6,000 a month. In contrast, automated technology like the self-order kiosks you now see in the lobby of many fast food restaurants (like McDonald’s) can perform the functions of the cashier at a fraction of the cost 24/7.
Automation is taking over many aspects of the hospitality industry, from fast-food cashiers to hotel check-ins. Job candidates, already concerned over a lack of career progression may use this as an excuse to stay away.
Automation doesn’t have to be scary. It will inevitably transform how many industries—including hospitality —function, but that doesn’t have to be bad. Automation is retooling business models, lowering costs, improving customer experiences, and in many cases, opening up the market for new hospitality roles!
As McKinsey writes in their piece “How to ‘ACE’ Hospitality Recruitment,” “As automation takes over more tasks currently performed by humans, new job roles will be created, especially to design and manage emerging technologies and digital solutions. It is estimated that 65 percent of primary-school students in 2030 will perform jobs that don’t yet exist.”
How do you translate this excitement to potential job seekers? These challenges and solutions are interconnected if you haven’t caught on yet. Include the excitement that comes with roles that haven’t been created into part of your employer brands. Discuss this at your job interviews. Ask candidates questions about what roles they’d like that haven’t been thought of yet, for example. Uncertainty could be scary or exciting—use your marketing to focus on the latter!
You can also showcase in recruiting collateral how automation may make roles easier and less labor-intensive!
HiringThing is a modern recruiting and employee onboarding platform as a service that creates seamless talent experiences. Our white label solutions and open API enable HR technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the HiringThing HR platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.