Knowing how to find the right employees to fill open restaurant positions is not only necessary for running a functional restaurant, but it’s integral to stay ahead of the competition. As of 2019, there were just under 1 million unfilled jobs in the restaurant and hospitality industries – with that number expected to almost double in the next 10 years.
Because of the hiring challenges managers have been facing the last couple years, it’s become harder to find the right employees and make the right hire to help grow your team. Since December 2018, the unemployment rate has hovered below 4%, with an all-time low record for the first time in 50 years. Fewer workers are available for job openings, making the demand much higher than the supply. A smaller pool of available talent is forcing businesses to think more creatively when making recruitment and hiring decisions.
In order to find the right employees for your open positions, you need to do a lot of prep work. If your restaurant requires seasoned, experience professionals, you’ll have to carefully vet their experience and check references. If guest experience is a main priority, you’ll want to hire someone who has great soft skills. This must all be taken into account when putting together a job description. Before even meeting the candidate face to face, you’ll have to be sure they’re interested in the job. With all these steps, it’s no wonder that on average it can take more than a month to make a hire.
Fortunately, the hospitality industry has one of the lowest averages for time to hire, around 10 days. In that time, managers must come up with a job description and are often responsible for advertising the open position on a job board. Once job seekers have been identified, the interviews begin. Ideally, at the end of this process, you’ve made a good hire. Unfortunately it’s not always that straight forward, as many hiring managers will attest to. Sometimes candidates fall off during the interview or get another job, forcing the process to start over again. Often the process can take longer, as not every restaurant has a person solely dedicated to hiring.
Another factor to consider when you want to find the right employees is the cost, taking into account actual money spent as well as the time spent by employees on the hiring process. On average, the cost of hiring an hourly worker is between $3,000 and $4,000. If you have several open positions, it can cost over $10,000 to staff your team. Currently turnover in the restaurant industry is 70%, making the need to carefully assess candidates and ensure they’re a great fit for the position key in retaining employees.
How LGC Helps Restaurants Find the Right Employees
When you find the right employees, it can be the deciding factor in whether a restaurant is successful or not. By creating a memorable experience from the food to the service, you’ll have guests coming back for more and sharing their positive feedback with other customers. Having worked in the hospitality industry for 17 years, LGC understands the importance of a great team and how hard it can be to assemble one – which is why we launched our Recruitment Subscription Service.
LGC’s Recruiting Subscription Service offers restaurant groups the opportunity to hire hourly workers for a flat monthly fee by prescreening candidates during a thorough interview process. Restaurants will provide the job description and necessary skills needed for the position. Our dedicated recruiters pre-screens candidates, which includes a resume search, phone interview, and face to face interview with pre-qualification questions provided by the client.
From there, LGC sends notes and resumes to the hiring manager at the restaurant. Only those candidates who meet qualifications and express interest in the job opportunity are referred to the client for potential hire. Although the service has a one month minimum, many clients have utilized it for three plus months for ongoing recruitment. The flat fee is based upon how many referred candidates the restaurant group requests.
By allowing LGC to handle candidate recruitment and pre-screening, clients will benefit by seeing lower costs associated with hiring, because they aren’t responsible for advertisement costs. The service also helps save time by eliminating these (sometimes tedious) tasks. While LGC handles recruitment and pre-screening, you’re free to attend to matters that help grow and scale your business.
In addition to the subscription service helping with time and cost saving, it also allows for a variety of candidates that you may not have reached on your own. Our recruiting team works out of the box — we steer clear of any type of recruiting that we know you’ve already tried. Through various recruiting channels, we can also tap into passive candidates, which diversifies the applicant pool.
What sets LGC apart is our knowledge of the restaurant industry and understanding the immediacy to get top tier candidates to fill open positions. Because we have experience working with restaurants of all levels, we are the leader in food and beverage placement nationwide. We’re passionate about helping businesses find the perfect team to lead them to success. No matter your needs, our team is dedicated to creating a plan that works for you.
To learn more about LGC’s Recruiting Subscription Service including pricing and how to get started, contact the General Manager of the Perm Division, Jaime Horning.
Jaime Horning | General Manager of Perm Division
Email: jaimeh@lgcassociates.com
Phone: 503-308-4671