The turnover rate for the hospitality industry currently sits at 47%. For every 10 members of staff you hire, you can expect almost half of them to leave within a year. There are ways to combat this and retain your members of staff. It starts at the beginning with recruiting bartenders and bar staff, and continues throughout employment.
Job descriptions
If you recruit bar staff effectively and efficiently you begin the process of building a strong team. Just as employees have to make a good first impression, so must you. If you’re recruiting online then your communications, i.e your job offer/description, needs to be thought through.
It isn’t as easy as simply “recruiting bartenders with experience” because one of the main obstacles when it comes to this is simply finding the right people in the first place. Effective job descriptions will help you overcome that first hurdle.
Interviewing candidates
Interviews are just as important as advertising the job. If you head into the interview process without preparing yourself, you’ll fail to ask effective questions and could miss out on important follow up questions.
Examples of effective interview questions:
- What is it about [your venue] that makes you want to work here?
- What are you looking to achieve whilst working for us?
- What would you normally do in your spare time?
By asking questions that can lead to follow up/response based questions you can learn more about your candidate and they can learn more about you and/or your company. More often than not, the person you’re interviewing will show signs of nerves; it’s your job to make them as comfortable as possible, even if you’re equally as uncomfortable. When someone is relaxed in a situation, that’s when you’ll see the true personality of the person you’re potentially entrusting to represent your company.
“Hire for fit, train for skill”
Personality plays a larger part in recruitment for hospitality than perhaps other sectors. A key component for effective recruitment is assessing how well they can be trained to work within your company versus how their personality will affect your atmosphere. You can always train someone to work a service bar, you can’t change someone’s personality.
Once you’ve finished recruiting bartenders and the right staff for your venue, it’s important that you effectively retain those members of staff to ensure you make the most of their skills and personalities. To find out more about how retaining your staff is beneficial to you and your business read our blog.