Restaurant Job Board Blog

Job hunting is one of those tasks in life we all have to endure from time to time. In this day and age, many of us tend not to stay in one career for for “life”, compared to the our parents’ generation, and this is especially true for restaurants. The industry can be fairly unstable, especially in a city where the rents are usually higher and there’s a lot of competition. Restaurants and bars fail and close up all the time, so even if you like your current job you might find yourself all of a sudden unemployed!

If you are for the moment unemployed and looking for a job, or if you already have a job and need to find a new one, there’s no escaping the dreaded job interview. You could very well be the most charming and surefooted person on the planet, but if you’re not used to the interview process or haven’t done an interview in a while you might want a little rehearsal. This is where conducting a “mock interview” can be quite helpful.

To try out a mock interview, ask a good friend or family member to help you and be your interview partner. Use somebody who you feel at ease around, and who you know will be 100 per cent honest with you. You don’t want a “yes man” type of person who, because of their personal bias toward you, will be blind to your deficiencies.

Also, it helps if your interview partner has a great deal of experience in interviews him or herself. Perhaps you know someone who works in a human resources department of a company? They know all the angles!

Ask your interview partner to prepare some sensible questions that an employer would ask an interviewee. Make sure you don’t know the questions in advance, so you can practice thinking on your feet! As in a real interview, you should prepare yourself as well by thinking up answers to common interview questions. You can search online for typical interview questions if you need some examples.

Ask your “buddy” to honestly measure how you “come across”–ask him or her to take note of times in your replies when you seem too arrogant or cocky, or too hesitant. If you want another perspective on how you come across to others, try practicing on your own looking into the mirror.

While it’s essential to be prepared, obviously, don’t over-think it. Being too self-conscious during a real interview can paralyze you and make you look nervous.

Remember, interviews for restaurant jobs can often be more informal than corporate interviews, depending, of course, on the size and service level of the establishment. Your interview process for a fine dining establishment or the restaurant of a major expensive hotel might be a bit more involved or intense than that for a local pub or watering hole.

Here’s another piece of advice: make sure you smile! It goes without saying that you’ll be nervous during your real interview. Because of this, smiling might not come naturally to you. So practice your smile, making it an active component of your presentation, when doing your mock interview. Studies have shown that facial expressions can actually have an impact on mood. So smiling, as well as making a positive impression on your future employer, can genuinely help generate a positive confident mood that will help you breeze through your interview.

The key is to be yourself, be prepared, and be confident in your abilities and assets as a potential employee. If you haven’t done interviews in a while, or are new to job hunting, you might be a bit rusty. So performing a mock interview with a helpful friend is a great way to break the ice!

Recently my wife and I had a craving for an All You Can Eat Buffet situation a few times. Once for Japanese and once for Chinese. It was a spur of the moment thing, not two weeks of planning with a babysitter. We have three children, a newborn, a five year old girl and an eight year old boy. Both places wanted $12-$17 for any child over 3yrs old. Two skinny Asian kids! My girl can eat ONE adult portion max, my boy is a starch only eater and seems to live on oxygen alone. It’s not like my wife can eat more than one adult portion either, we just wanted a huge selection of food to try out. In the end, we decided against going and spent our money else where. Those businesses lost approx $60 of business each time just from my wife and I ($25 per person, plus one drink each) for being greedy as they are.

I know that there are different business models, different ways of doing things, certain clientèle that you may deem ‘undesirable‘ (in your head only, don’t broadcast this) for your particular business, etc., etc. My point is be reasonable in your pricing structure and put yourself in people’s shoes. How much does it cost a family of four at McD’s these days? With tax probably around $22-$25. So how much more value do you provide than your competitor? How different are you? What is one happy customer worth to you over a few years in repeat visits and recommendations to family, friends and co-workers?

How’s this for a marketing technique? Post the $12 for a child over 3yrs clearly at front and on your menus, and then train your hostess to say: “Gee your kids are so cute. I’m sure they don’t eat much. Let’s make sure that you can all enjoy our great selection tonight. I’ll make sure that your waitress gives you a 40% discount, so you’ll only pay $7.25 for each of these adorable children. Come this way, your table is ready.”

Voila! – $75 sale made before tax and tip. I’d be back there once a month, wouldn’t you?

It takes very little to stand above the crowd of competition, always think like a customer.

Busting the Myth of Picking “The Right Person”

Through the experience of interviewing thousands of applicants over a span of 10yrs of restaurant management, I can tell you that after 6-8mths of tweaking and refining a regular recruitment program that you’ll start getting statistics for many stages of your program.

How many people show up to the open roll call that you invited by email or phone out of 10 applicants? How many people are a good fit out of 10? How many people actually show up for their first training shift? How many people finish your training program? How many people stay after the probation period? How many people perform at your expectations after training? How many people quit after 1 month? 3 months? 6 months?

Once you understand your numbers in regards to acquiring, training and retaining staff, then the negative emotions and frustrations will leave you.

Can you be a good or bad restaurant recruiter? Are the employees that didn’t work out bad people or poor employees in general? Not necessarily. Very few people are actually bad apples, just the wrong timing or environment. You will make good choices and some poor ones, what holds it all together is your system of hiring and training that will minimize your time and money investment in new employees.

At the end of the day you have to realize that the more people you have working at your restaurant then more problems will intersect at your business. Employees that get into car accidents, family members becoming ill or close to death, other opportunities or priorities that they are passionate about that spring up, forgotten commitments, better offers that lagged a few days or a few weeks after you have hired and trained them. Life happens. Or if you work in a restaurant or bar everyone would say, “Stuff happens“.

So?! How do you keep the ebb and flow of many people’s lives intersecting from destroying your sanity and business and keep your organization stacked with great people…?

1. Create ways to get a constant flow of applicants coming in. Always be watchful for talent. Keep asking your friends and family (if you want to), asking current staff, keep placing free online ads, look to local colleges and universities, recruiting people from other businesses when you are out and about living your life, etc.
2. Have regular interviewing periods. Bi-weekly or bi-monthly, or whenever the interval needs to be depending on your business. It has to be regular and constant. The current staff has to be expecting it. It will make the weak staff nervous. New blood coming into your organization that is not apathetic to your company’s culture can be a fresh injection of energy and motivation. Have it in blocks of time during your super slow periods. Don’t make individual appointments; it’s a waste of your time. Have applicants come as a first come, first serve basis, like a casting call for a commercial.
3. Have the applicants freely choose to leave the process anywhere from the ad to the 1st training shift. Write clear ads that have people who don’t want to do that specific kind of work that you require, or for that kind of money, not waste your time. Have templated emails that you can cut and paste to invite applicants to come within your interviewing time frame.

Other aspects to hiring the ‘right’ restaurant employee:

Have a set of questions ready. What criteria are most important to you?

My top two things are: attitude and willingness – You can’t mold someone who has a bad attitude and doesn’t want to be or do.

Have their homework ready if they get hired. Ex. Memorizing a portion of the menu, dressing a certain way for training, signing company rules and policies form, etc.

What makes any program work are mini improvements that add up over time, and consistent effort in maintaining the integrity of the procedures that you set up. If you commit to be consistent in your plan, attitude, moods and actions, then you will eventually get ‘The Right Restaurant Employee’ on your team, not by picking them by fluke.

This example is from a multimillion dollar a year 24hr operation with over 40 employees and 50 tables. Depending on the type of restaurant you have you probably won’t have to run even 25% of these numbers. 24hr restaurants are the toughest to staff.

What you can get from this Example Hiring Campaign are ideas for developing a structured system of hiring that produces predictable results for your specific business. Proper planning and consistent execution will take the frustration and anxiety out of the staffing issues, so you can focus on making your customers rave about your business.

This exact ad was reposted every 3-4wks from Jan.2007 to Jan.2008 on craigslist.org for ‘hospitality Toronto’, and brought in approx. 2200 resumes. This could be applied to any type of Job with traffic and you should be able to acquire similar results. You may even get better results from Restaurant Job Board.

Here are the results from this hiring campaign:

• 70-80% of the applicants were sent an email asking them to bring a copy of their resume, and inviting them to an interview from 5am-7am on Mon or Wed mornings because this time was when the nightly cleaning and restocking was done, and when the restaurant was nearly empty.
• Approx 25% (that’s approx. 30-35/month) of those invited showed up to be interviewed. Interviews lasted 1-10mins each.
• 10%-20% of those interviewed were hired. Everyone interviewed were told that if no call back was given within two days, then their resume was getting filed for future reference. Almost no one was ever hired on the spot; new hires were usually called the next day.
  Those hired were given about 5pages of information regarding their 1st shift by email.
• 1/3 of new hires did not show up for 1st training shift. Those that showed up signed a 12page company policy and rules waiver. After each training shift, new handouts were given to prepare for the next training shifts.
• 1/3 of new trainees did not complete the 4 training shifts, or did not complete w/ satisfactory results.
• 1/3 of new trainees that made it through the process were incredible and well rounded/ interchangeable in regards to positions within the restaurant. Training shifts were always with the best staff and during the busiest periods.

Everyone went through the exact experience.

They all had completed one physically grueling bussing, dishwashing, cleaning, restocking shift,
second and third shifts were used to learn to make all alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks,
and the fourth was used to learn how to properly serve tables.

Here’s the actual ad:

SERVERS WANTED for a crazy, fun, 24hr, café, restaurant, bar (drinks till 1:45am only) in a three-storey old Victorian building.

EXPERIENCE: Preferred, but will train ALL new staff regardless of experience.

FOR: (ABC COMPANY), a three floor/ 50 table restaurant/bar (the bar is NOT 24hrs!!!) that is opened 24hrs with approx. 40+ staff with a 17yr. history located at (BLANK ST.W) [just south of (BLANK)/ just west of (BLANK) on (BLANK)].
Check out: www.(ABC).com

Note from Management: The goal of this ad is not to scare people or make the job seem impossible and negative. It is to give an honest offering of what one will experience, make in money and the time commitment. We want to be clear, so that you don’t waste your time sending in a resume to a place that requires something of you that you may not want to do. Ex. Tons and tons of cleaning on top of server/bar duties.

• Please do not re-apply if you have done so in the past. We have filed your resume. Thank you.
• Please do not call about this ad, or hand in a resume at the restaurant.
• Please email your resume only in a Microsoft Word document or Adobe PDF form.

APPROX. PAY: $6.95/hr (Server Min. Wage) PLUS pooled tips. The averages inc.tips and wages are below.
Day time Avgs: approx. $20-$50 in tips.
Approx. $10-$13/hr.
Night time and Overnights Avgs: approx. $50-$150 in tips.
Approx. $16-$18-$22/hr.
Shifts are varied in length, difficulty and money. Less difficulty, less money.
Shifts are 8-12hrs. long.
Shifts are given based on each past week’s performance, NOT seniority.
You will never be given a shift that you cannot handle yet.
There is No Status at (ABC Company) – Managers, Servers, Bartenders, Bussers all do jobs interchangeably. Sometimes Servers & Bartenders do bussing shifts. It’s the same money.

MOST IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTES REQUIRED:

1. Willingness to work relentlessly, because the pace here requires it.
2. Willingness to work varying shifts because we are open 24hrs.
3. Willingness to learn and follow the (ABC) system, regardless of the serving/ restaurant methods and habits you are used to.
4. Possessing a friendly and positive attitude. This is key anywhere.
5. Willingness to do a LOT of cleaning. We are FANATICAL about cleaning. EVERY TYPE of cleaning possible in a 24hrs. restaurant/ bar/ café.
6. A great attitude towards your customers, work, co-workers and management. At 8am or 5am? Yes.
   Attitude mentioned twice? YES.
7. Being on time.

TRAINING PERIOD: 4 training shifts.
Training shifts will occur in these usually timeframes:
8pm-7am/ 8pm-6am/ 9pm-6am/ 10pm-6am/ 5pm-3am, unless otherwise scheduled.

BENEFICIAL DIFFERENCE FOR SERVERS WORKING AT (ABC COMPANY):

1. 1 Consistent money because we are constantly busy, and have been lucky enough to have the broadest range of customers you have ever seen in a restaurant.
2. Don’t have split shifts where you have to work a few hours, and then punch out for a few hours, then punch back in to work for a few more hours.
3. When you come for your scheduled shift and it is slow, you are not made to not punch in until it is busy like other restaurants.
   Unless it is ‘watching grass grow’ slow.
4. In 9 out of 10 times you will never be cut early in a shift because we are 24hrs, and our rushes are spread out and each staff has 2.5hrs. min. of cleaning duties even if there are still customers present.
5. THE MOST FLEXIBILITY IN SCHEDULING. Give us two weeks notice, and the dates you want off are done. Switch shifts with others whenever possible.
6. Prime shifts are given based on performance and attitude. There is NO seniority. Who has the best attitude towards customers, co-workers, and management? Who can do the most volume efficiently and correctly? Who can get their non-server duties done efficiently and without fuss? Who has consistent attitude and work habits?

WHAT TO DO NEXT? Email your resume to: (info@abc.com)
Please include an intro in your email with the following information:

1. From which ad are you responding from
2. State the position you are applying for

Also:

Do you have your Smart Serve Certification?

Do you live too far from a 24hr workplace? Do you really want to ride on public transit at 9am in the morning or at 11pm at night?

Please have your resume as an attached MS WORD document or a PDF and not within the body of the email or attached as a different file type.

If you are NOT emailed within a week, then your resume will be filed for future reference. Thank you.

Was the above example restaurant hiring campaign useful…? What do you do? What did you like about this post…? Comment below.