Tips on Hiring The Right Hospitality Staff

It’s no secret that the hospitality industry has taken a beating from the effects of covid. As the economy starts to reopen and people start to travel again for work and leisure there is a renewed need for trained hospitality staff to fill the vacant positions.

That means resorts, hotels, convention centers, casinos, and restaurants that are reopening are in a mad dash to find qualified staff to man the various departments in their businesses. Hospitality businesses have been expanding their workforce to keep up with the demand. But hiring the right employees for hospitality jobs can be challenging. While knowing how to properly open a bottle of champagne and utilize the resort’s property management software are an essential skill set for hospitality workers, it’s even more important for them to have people skills. Having strong customer-centric skills is the single most important quality that any hospitality professional can have. But how does a hospitality business know if a candidate will have those coveted customer-service skills?

In today’s day and age of online reviews, a bad hire can be detrimental to a hospitality business. It can also be difficult for hospitality businesses to recover from a bad hire. If a customer experiences bad service from an employee, they’ll likely never come back and are more likely to post about it on sites like Trip Advisor and Yelp. It can take the hospitality business years to recover from the bad publicity that can arise from a viral post of a bad experience at their property. Add to that the loss in productivity and downtime from having to replace that employee and the added burden caused on their staff who have to chip in to fill that temporary vacancy.

Knowing how to identify and cultivate customer service-oriented skill sets in staff is essential for all human resource managers in the hospitality industry. In this blog, we will look at what people skills to look for when hiring in the hospitality industry and provide tips on how we screen candidates to provide you with the best hospitality staff.

What Skills Does a Successful Hospitality Employee Need to have?

The term people skills refer to an employee’s ability to interact with other people and navigate the intricacies of different personality types with the result being a satisfied customer. It is a set of personality traits that while intangible, are necessary to be able to respond to and manage customer service crises. Human Resource Managers tend to focus on experience, educational background, and hard skills but this alone is not a complete indicator of someone’s ability to do the job, especially when that job involves interacting with customers on a daily basis. For hospitality jobs having great people, skills can be even more important than educational qualifications. As one of the leading hospitality staffing agencies in South Florida, GL Staffing Services Inc, looks for the following personality traits when screening potential candidates for hospitality jobs:

Does the candidate have an outgoing and friendly demeanor?

The right personality is a must for service industry employees. Anyone you hire not only has to treat guests kindly but also has to have an authentic, outgoing demeanor. We look for candidates who smile, make eye contact, and have an all-around warm personality. Studies have shown that a simple smile can go a far way to diffusing situations before they become volatile so a happy healthy smile on a hospitality worker’s face is a must when handling client affairs.

Do they have the ability to gauge and respond to customer needs?

Anticipating problems and devising solutions on the fly is a specific skill set that anyone who wants to succeed in a hospitality environment needs to have. This is no easy task as it requires reading body language or using the available information to make judgment calls. For example, a restaurant server should be able to tell that a customer looking in their direction needs attention. And a front desk agent at a hotel or resort should assume that a guest checking in late may have had a delayed flight and wants to get to their room quickly.

Do they go above and beyond the call of duty to exceed customer expectations?

In many cases, customers of hospitality businesses are celebrating a milestone such as an anniversary, birthday, honeymoon, or that long-awaited vacation. In all likelihood, they’ve been looking forward to the experience for a long time and your employees should do everything possible to live up to their expectations. Hospitality industry jobs usually require staff to be client-facing, this means they have to have a friendly yet professional demeanor always. In other jobs, you may be able to have an off day and let it show, not so in the hospitality industry.

The customer is always right – even when they are wrong

The phrase “the customer is always right” rings true in the hospitality industry. Even if a guest is rude or unreasonable, service industry employees have to be thick-skinned enough to accept the criticism and do whatever possible to correct the problem. A simple rule is to not take it personally and as a hospitality staffing agency, we look for candidates who are able to perform with the same level of professionalism while under fire. In most cases, that means finding a solution quickly and creatively and turning a disappointed customer into a satisfied one.

What to look for when hiring hospitality professionals

Whilst having a well-written and stacked resume is great, it plays second fiddle to having the right personality traits and fortitude to handle the high-stress face-paced world of hospitality. You can spend time and money on training new hires on your policies, software, and procedures but it will all be a grand waste if you don’t hire the right personality for the job. Interviewing is especially important in the hospitality industry so use these tips when meeting candidates:

• The conversation matters – Beyond their answers to typical interview questions, look for the candidate’s ability to carry on a conversation in a friendly manner. Do they make eye contact, smile, and have a warm personality?
• Take the candidate’s appearance into account – If your business has certain attire standards for the staff, you’ll get an idea of the candidate’s ability to follow them. If they can’t show up to the interview well-groomed with an ironed shirt, there’s no way they’ll be able to show up to work every day with the right appearance.
• Ask situational questions – If you want to learn how a potential employee will deal with specific challenges, ask situational interview questions. You can present them with a difficult situation they could encounter on the job and ask them to walk you through how they would solve it.
• Consider giving promising candidates a trial run – After you find a candidate who seems like they might be a good fit, it’s not a bad idea to let them work a shift and see how they do. You might find that despite having the right personality, they struggle to multitask and following your process. A trial run is especially a good idea for candidates who don’t have experience in your specific industry.

Hire great hospitality employees

Great hospitality professionals are difficult to train so hiring the right people is especially important. At GL Staffing we have been providing top-quality hospitality staff to South Florida hospitality businesses for decades. If you are a hiring manager and are looking for strong candidates to fill your hospitality jobs, contact us HERE today or call us at 954-973-8350. GL Staffing Services, “We Get The Job Done”.