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Feedback or Failback?

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A young man giving a thumbs up with both thumbs

Feedback is fundamental to your job hunting success.  Sometimes it can be uncomfortable to ask for advice or constructive criticism about your interview.  But, if you’re doing tons of interviews and not landing the job, maybe it’s time to ask for feedback.  And here’s how to ask for It.

Asking for feedback is key

The best time to ask for feedback is when the interviewer tells you the company isn’t interested.  Timing is key here.  Whether you receive a phone call or an e-mail, use the opportunity to ask how you could improve or what your weak spots were during the interview.  You could also ask if the interviewer has any specific advice for you.  The goal is not to argue, share your frustrations or anger.  Even though you desire to know exactly why you weren’t offered the job, your goal is to get a critique of your performance and move ahead.  Ultimately it is up to the hiring manager whether they respond.  But if you put your best foot forward during the interview, you’ve already increased your odds.

Navigating feedback for a productive result

What if you are unable to ask for feedback directly from the hiring company?  There are still several key things you can do to figure out where you are going astray.  It starts with a solid foundation.  Make sure you are interviewing for the right jobs.  Just because you have been selected for interviews does not mean you are a viable candidate.  Next, evaluate yourself.  Honestly reflect on your responses to the interview questions.  Finally, seek out a trusted friend to role play an interview.  Give them a specific job posting and list of questions.  Instruct them to ask the questions randomly.  This mock interview practice will provide a more real-world recruitment experience.  Ask them for their honest feedback about different facets of your performance (manners, attire, preparedness, confidence, etc.).

Conclusion

Receiving feedback from an interviewer is invaluable.  You also can determine how to improve your interview performance on your own.  Either way, it doesn’t hurt to ask.  Be open to feedback, willing to change, and ace your next interview.

5 Questions You Should Be Answering In An Upcoming Interview

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Two women having a technical chat

As you gear up to interview for a job in the restaurant or hospitality industry, preparing properly is vital for getting the job.  Knowing why a question is being asked and preparing answers for these 5 common restaurant interview questions will give you an edge over other applicants.  If you know what to expect when interviewing you can put your best foot forward. 

1. Tell Me About Yourself

This question always feels a bit awkward to answer.  But, relevance is key here.  When asked this question the interviewer is looking for your past work experience.  Avoid going into your life story or listing hobbies.  You can always include a few facts about yourself if they will help you stand out.  Stick to responses centered around training and work and education related information.  If you are not comfortable answering this simple question your interviewer may assume you would be uncomfortable conversing with guests.  Let your personality shine by sharing experiences that make you excited, happy and motivated.

2. Why Do You Want To Work in the Restaurant Industry?

You should be able to answer this question with confidence.  Your interviewer wants to make sure you understand the people-oriented industry you are entering.  You should state that you enjoy being around people, prefer a fast paced environment, and can handle accommodating customers.  You want to show that you are cut out for the job.

3. Do You Have Any Prior Experience in the Restaurant Industry?

You should be able to answer this question with confidence.  Your interviewer wants to make sure you understand the people-oriented industry you are entering.  You should state that you enjoy being around people, prefer a fast paced environment, and can handle accommodating customers.  You want to show that you are cut out for the job.

This is a standard interview question.  Often the interviewer is wanting to know how much training you will need before you start the role.  If you have experience, share it!  However, if you do not have any prior experience in the industry, be upfront and honest.  Then focus on related experiences you do have.  If you worked in a grocery store, you have experience with customer satisfaction and taking care of business property.  Though this may be your first restaurant position, you do not lack the skills to be successful.

4. Why Our Restaurant?

If you show excitement about working at a specific restaurant, you are more likely to be committed after you are hired.  With so much competition in hiring people to work in the restaurant industry, your interviewer is particularly interested in why you are applying to work for them.  This is an opportunity for you to show something you noticed or appreciate about their establishment.  Maybe you like the decor, or the variety on the menu.  Or when you have dined there the staff was very friendly.  If you are unfamiliar with the restaurant, spend time researching prior to your interview so you can successfully answer this question.

5. Why Should We Hire You?

With this straightforward question an interviewer is simply looking for your opinion; why would you excel in this position.  Answer with confidence and clarity.  This is a great opportunity to reiterate your strengths and past experience.  Wrap up the interview by authentically sharing why you want to work for the establishment.

Are Wage Increases the New Norm?

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chef with arms folded standing in his restaurant

It is hard to ignore the signs up in our neighborhoods.  “NOW HIRING.”  “HELP WANTED.”  “APPLY NOW”.   Whether a small business or well-established chain, it seems no one is exempt.  Low-wage work is in high demand, and employers are competing for applicants.  Though the industry has become more competitive than ever before, recent events have pushed positive changes for restaurant workers.  Sparked by the death of Anthony Bourdain, a national discussion is exposing challenging and far too common work conditions restaurant workers face.  With people speaking out, it is a pivotal point for the future of the restaurant industry.  Small changes are being made to repair a long broken system.  The effects of these changes are showing through dramatically improved wages for entry-level employees.

Hourly workers at or below federal minimum wage peaked in the early 1980s.  According to statistics from the Bureau of Labor, in 1980 over 13% of hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage.  In 2019, only 1.9% of hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage.  This dramatic shift is partly due to states and individual businesses establishing higher minimum wages than the federal level.  However, the battle to increase the minimum wage has not faded.  In fact, low wages in the restaurant industry has propelled the fight to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 almost 10 years ago.  In our current tight labor market, many restaurant employers are offering pay far above the federal minimum wage of $7.25.  

A recent survey by Poachedjobs.com asked employers about starting wages.  Only 4% of respondents said they pay less than the federal minimum wage (likely due to a tip pay structure).  An overwhelming majority, 96%, reported paying more than the federal minimum wage.  53% reported starting at $15 or more!  Employers are eager to measure up so these pay increases are pushing others to raise starting wages above the legal minimum wage of their area.  The effects are rippling through businesses as 89% of Poachedjobs.com survey respondents said they expect to raise wages in the future.

The restaurant industry offers many worthwhile career opportunities.  And much is being done to make the industry a better place for its workers.  As employers desire to stay competitive and improve retention, increasing pay is becoming the new norm.  Working in an entry-level position is an excellent gateway to the industry.  If you’re looking to start a career in the restaurant industry, it’s better than it’s ever been.

We’ve placed some of the best talent into some of the best restaurants on the West Coast. As the economy begins to open up again, we’re gearing up to continue the work we love. We can offer more details to qualified candidates about some of our exclusive and high-level searches.

4 Questions to Ask When Building Your Management Team 

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photo of a chef in an apron with his arms folded

Building your team is a task that takes time, and following a pandemic, it’s a task that is taking even more time than many restaurant owners would like to admit. From hiring for the back of house to a specialty manager, finding the right employee saves you both time and money. We’ve all seen the stats on just how much a bad hire really costs. 

Often times we see managers and business owners work to promote employees who really may not be the best fit. In the end, the result is an unhappy employee and lots of burnout to accompany. From our experience we’ve rounded up four questions to ask yourself when it comes to hiring or internally promoting. We think that how you answer these questions could help provide you the direction needed to move forward in growing your business. 

Do they have the skillset to be a manager?

Do they communicate and seem engaged?

Do they do the things we need to get the numbers we need?

Do they follow your systems? 

Let’s break them down. 

Does the employee you’re looking to promote or hire have the skillset to be a manger? We can only answer that once we know what does it take for a candidate or employee to look and act ready for a promotion into management?

1. They’re self-managed.
There’s a lot to say about an employee who arrives on time, takes care of business and is always solving problems for themselves in a professional manor. From the get go, it’s usually easy to see what standout individuals are a part of your team.

2. They lead in a way they’d want to be led.
Among the restaurant industry, there can be a lot of personalities which sometimes result in some unpleasant moments in the back of house. An employee ready to manage carries themselves in the way they’d want their own manager to handle conflict and works to keep themselves clear of causing personal conflict. Whether it’s getting along with every employee or you use her or him as an example of patience, performance and productivity – employees working towards promotion lead by example.

3. They set goals and achieve them.
Leaders set goals and develop a roadmap to accomplish them. And when they need help to accomplish their goals? They ask! Look at your timecards… who is putting in the hours during the busy days and during the times it is somewhat inconvenient to work, whether that be holidays or evening. The best future manager you can hire is the one who puts in the time today.


Does your employee or candidate communicate and seem engaged?
What’s the employee’s engagement level? It’s a candidates market and individuals are looking for the greatest and newest opportunities consistently.  Beyond the hire that stands out on paper with the skills to perform well, who are the ones with a genuine interest in the food and beverage industry as a whole? They are the ones likely to be satisfied in your working environment and therefore a steady employee.

More than just engaged in the industry, hire the candidate with shown social engagement skills too.  When employees are socially engaged in their career, guests notice it too. So what’s “socially engaged” mean? We’re talking about the candidates who like to lend a helping hand to their fellow co-workers, find importance in celebrating accomplishments and are not out to just make a buck or two…We’re talking about the ones who speak with the guest dining and are eager to ensure their experience is the best and most welcoming possible. Whether you’re after a close knit family culture, a strong team emphasis or any other cultural work ideas, hire the candidates who have shown you the social skills to meet your goals.  Your guest and other employees will thank you for the engagement levels each new employee possesses.

Do you believe your employee or candidate understands and can help get the number you need?
Are they ready to help GROW?! Better yet, are YOU ready to grow? When an individual is passionate about helping come alongside your goals, it’s a perfect start to having an excellent team member. The one thing we know is that enthusiasm spreads! And with the help of a single employee, your entire team can find renewed passion, excitement and zeal of their roles. 

Our last point is simple, does this individual follow your systems?
While for someone you are just interviewing you may not be able to accurately gage their ability to follow your business norms and systems,  through the application process you can see some key points that may give you some insight. Is their resume fully filled out? Did they respond to your job posting with all required materials requested? As for a current employee you’re considering promoting, it’s easy to evaluate their success in following your business norms and systems which make up your company culture. 

There’s more to the age-old practice of hiring than ever before… what are you doing to make it not only hard for candidates to want to walk away from your company after their hire, but before even accepting the position to ensure you’ve got the right hire?

After thirty years in the business, we absolutely know the hospitality industry — from boardroom to break room. We’ve worked at all levels of the restaurant industry. We speak the language. We know the people. We know where the openings are. We know how to find good people who care.

As We Recover Together, How Can We Forge Ahead?

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photo of an empty restaurant

There’s no possible way to gloss over 2020 – it was well, awful for many of us. This was a year where we watched a global pandemic shut down an industry we not only have poured our lives into and fully depend on, but also love. We’re all living with the baggage of the many months as we try and move on following what many will remember as a catastrophic year.

As vaccine rollouts continue across the nation and restrictions begin to loosen a bit more, we’re seeing new trends shape our industry and some are certainly more welcomed than others. As we look ahead to all that this summer has to offer, here are just two industry trends we’re seeing that we want to break down and hear from you on in the comments below. 

Hours of operation remain limited. 

While many restaurants are certainly open for dine-in or carry out, their hours of operation continue to remain cut slim from a pre-covid world. Closing early, opening late… it’s certainly fewer hours for those who love this industry and enjoy sharing their passion and skills within it each day. 

Some owners may simply elect to keep lobbies shut in favor of the many benefits of takeout, and curbside. In some spots, this may even be a preemptive, safety-first measure. But increasingly, it’s becoming a reflection of the sector’s mounting struggle to find workers.

The lack of talent for open jobs? It’s a combination of a few factors showing nationwide. One is the $300 weekly unemployment boost extended through the beginning of September in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Additionally, restaurants are struggling to have adequate supplies needed to keep their doors open for pre-covid hours. Distribution companies are struggling to find drivers because of unfavorable hours and fears of illness on the road. Some suppliers raised prices in response.

Skilled candidates and not seeking to fill vacant jobs.
As COVID-19 arrived, millions of restaurant jobs were lost to the pandemic last year, and since, other industries have been hiring at an accelerated pace as bars, hotels, and the like have been some of the last businesses to reopen fully. The attraction for employees to move away from the restaurant industry is at an all-time high for many. Whether it be alternative benefits, better work/life balance of hours, or a whole variety of reasons, finding talent to fill each open role in the industry is today, challenging. 

Recent students show a full 80 percent of employers are keeping at least one crew member role posted at all times. Economists predict that there could be as many as 10 million more jobs between now and year’s end to restore the labor market to its pre-pandemic level. But for employers, the fact remains that workers are hard to find.  

With struggles in limited operation hours and a lack of talent eager to take open jobs, we’re choosing to forge ahead and work towards helping our clients pivot and make strong hires for positions they in fact, may have never dreamed of hiring before. Because tough times don’t last… we will welcome guests to dine in our restaurants and return to travel soon. With the increasing number of individuals receiving Covid-19 vaccines, we are growing more and more confident that this is just a season.

We invite you to join us in forging ahead. Are you needing assistance evaluating your current or future hiring needs? We’re here to help. After 30 years of restaurant management hiring, we have the passion, the know-how and the network to bring you the best, fast.

Resume Tips You Can’t Afford to Miss

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People reviewing paperwork sitting at a table

We’ve been looking at resumes for the last 20+ years and after having many and we mean many pass across our desk, we’ve seen enough mistakes to write a book about them… but for the sake of time, we think highlighting just 3 or 4 will be beneficial for job seekers looking to find their place in a new role today. 

Your resume is just one piece of paper but holds such enormous power over your future. On the surface, a resume is simply a list of qualifications for a position. But resumes normally get less than a 15-second glance at the first screening. So to stand out from the crowd and score face time with hiring managers, it should serve as a strategic marketing tool that screams, “I am perfect for this job!” The following tips have been designed to assist you in writing your resume; it reflects the expertise of dozens of industry hiring managers that have critiqued thousands of resumes.

Spelling and grammatical errors. 

Editing your resume to omit spelling and grammatical errors may just seem obvious, but in fact, these mistakes top the list of deal-breakers for our clients when reviewing who to interview. It can be hard to spot these types of simple, yet noticeable, errors on your resume. Grab a second set of eyes from your partner or a trusted friend to give you honest feedback and ensure your resume is error-free! By all means, this one thing along may be the difference you landing the job against the talent that’s stacked up against you! 

Using an unprofessional email address.

Gone are the days where “CaliFan253@aol.com” is an email address worthy of playing on a resume. While you may be a standout Cali fan, having an email that is professional goes a long way. Typically we suggest a first name and last name be included in your email. As for the platform you select to host your email, that’s a personal preference. 

Along the lines of having a professional email address, if the goal of a resume is to land you an interview, missing pertinent contact information, or the contact information you’ve included is incorrect, you’re making it very difficult for recruiters and hiring managers to get in touch with you! 

Extra tip: Forego adding your contact information on your resume in the header portion of a Word document or paste your contact information in as an image. Applicant tracking systems and today’s bot systems often cannot read that information and will list your contact details as missing or incomplete in the system. 

Failing to outline quantifiable results. 

As a recruiter, we have one main job… to find the BEST candidates for our clients. When your resume fails to mention your accomplishments and how you can better our client’s business we have no reason to move forward in the interview process with you. Showcase your results in your resume. Results are best described as quantifiable results. These can include business growth numbers, improved retention stats, increased production, and so on. Without demonstrating or providing quantifiable results, it might appear that you had “responsibilities,” yet didn’t take initiative or achieve actual results. 

Your resume is longer than two pages.

Ask any recruiter, and you will hear that any resume beyond two pages does not get a full look. When filtering through resumes, time is of the essence so communicating your prior work history, current skills and quantifiable results in a summary format is the key to success. 

For a sample resume, visit our website. 

If you have stellar resume suggestions, feel free to comment below. We’ve love to hear your feedback. 

Your Most Loyal Customer? Your Employee.

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restaurant kitchen
Step back for a moment and think about who delivers your highly sought after, dreamed about and prized guest experience time and time again? It’s not your customers who bring that on for themselves… It is your employees who make the customer’s loyalty a reality for your business.
 
Facts show that employees spend half of their lives at work and that when employees are unhappy at work, the service and experience guests receive suffers.  When you start to realize how your employees are truly your greatest customer, you quickly begin to evaluate the areas that they draw likes and dislikes about your business from:
 
  1. The physical environment in which an employee works.
  2. The support and tools an employer provides to effectively do the job.
  3. How an employer takes an interest in the well-being and success of employees.
Let’s break it down.
 

The physical environment in which an employee works determines their morale about the work.

What’s it like in the back where your guests don’t dare see? Well lit? Ample space for employees personal belongings? How you offer your employees space to start and end their work day shows how greatly your value their role. Because in the end, you can’t expect top rated customer service from employee’s who feel distrusted and discounted. Successful businesses focus on creating memorable employee experiences to keep their staff engaged and happy which always overflows into their customer experience and bottom line.

In the heat of the moment, having tools and training that don’t really apply to guest needs, creates great frustration for employees.  

Each employee is at the forefront of using the support and tools you provide. When was the last time you asked for feedback on the effectiveness, ease of use and enjoyment of those tools? Everything from POS to menu displays, your employees are your most valuable resource in gaining feedback to better your business.

How can you ensure you’re treating your employees as your most loyal customer?
 
Engage with them and take an interest in the well-being and success of them, beyond your business walls. 
 
No one knows how to upgrade the employee experience better than your employees themselves. Ask them what they love about working in the company and what they would want you to do differently to reduce frustrations and improve work conditions. And after you’ve listened, listen again to hear about their personal likes, interest and status. You might just find out that you’ve got the most eclectic, interesting and exciting team in town!

A New Year… A New You!

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The ball has dropped, we rung in the New Year… and now what? Your inbox has likely been full of top New Year’s Resolutions that involve weight loss, spending habits, goal setting planners, etc.
 
Once you’re done with your year-end reflection for 2017, it’s time to look forward to the year that has begun. What will you write for the next chapter of your life? It’s entirely up to you. Take the first step to making sure that it’s a great chapter by making some changes for YOU, and only YOU.
 
This year only 8 percent of people will actually keep their New Year’s resolutions, according to one commonly cited statistic. There are many reasons people can’t stick to their resolutions, from setting too many of them to getting derailed by small failures.
 
If you made a big, career-related New Year’s resolution this year, we’re betting it’s one of three things: finding a new job, getting a big promotion at your current company, or finally venturing out on your own.
 
What are you waiting for? Here are our two best tips for getting started and to not make your resolution harder than it has to be.
 

Get your resume back in shape.

First things first, it’s time to dust off that hardcopy resume and freshen it up.  Sure, the basic facts will always remain the same. Your last employer will always be your last employer and that alma mater is never changing, but there are some key things that should.
 
You should determine what skills and experiences from past jobs to highlight based on the job description of the position you’re applying for. Maybe they’re looking for a kitchen manager with leadership experience? Be sure to highlight that specifically on the resume you submit for that opening.
 
Include your latest volunteer works, career advances and reference contacts.
 
For your resume be sure and slim it down to be only one or two pages – gone are the days of multiple pages jammed packed with every detail of your past.  Offer a summary to employers and bring more detailed examples and information to your first interview.
 

Network like it’s your day job.

If you do anything to get your job search started this month, do this.  While looking for any new career opportunities, the more people you can connect with the better.  Networking can be hard for many, but the benefits far outweigh the uncomfortable moments of having to meet someone new.
 
Step away from the computer and get out there! You won’t regret it.