Hiring new employees is never easy — in the case of trying to hire and find restaurant manager, things can be even more difficult!
A restaurant manager has the pivotal role of providing the vital link between your food and beverages and paying customers. Staying calm when things don’t go well is one of the most important characteristics of a great restaurant manager, as well as the ability to constantly motivate their teams to provide the very best levels of customer service. We’ll be looking into what makes a great restaurant manager in more detail in an upcoming post this week.
During this post however, we’ll take a look at some of the different ways that an organization can go about finding a great restaurant manager, paying particular attention here to ways of searching online.
Do online job boards feature great restaurant managers?
When it comes to trying to search for a new great restaurant manager online, many employers will have used the most popular general online job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, and so on. There are also restaurant industry-specific job boards to consider, like HCareers, Shiftgig, and HospitalityServe (formerly BarServe), some of which are even free! All of these boards offer widespread promotion of your posting and many qualified applicants will see it via their own search or as a result of job agencies and recruiters searching there on their behalf.
However, most of these boards can charge relatively high fees for posting jobs, and unfortunately there is no guarantee for results. Therefore, you can end up with a lot of applicants or very few, and it is difficult to control. The other point to consider is that boards leave a lot of the hard work to the employer in terms of filtering through piles of resumes and trying to determine who is a good fit for the position.
In summary, some of the pros and cons of trying to use these job boards are as follows:
Pros
- Access to large volumes of people
- Relatively easy to produce a pool of candidates
- There are excellent candidates that apply to jobs there
Cons
- Can have a lower overall standard of candidates
- Often the information on a given candidate can be outdated
- The “vetting” process is not always as strong as it could be
- Often complicated and/or expensive fee structures
Of course if you want to be able to access hundreds of different profiles, then these boards can be a super way of doing so. The downside to this is that as an employer, it will come down to just how much time that you have available to go through the recruitment process. If you already recognize that time is scarce, then it might be worth trying to consider ways you can filter through candidates that apply through job boards, or other options for finding a great restaurant manager altogether. This is very similar to using online classifieds like Craigslist.
Closely related to online job boards, LinkedIn can be another innovative way to find many job candidates. The benefits of using LinkedIn really have to do with networking — it’s far easier to find candidates that are known to people in your network. You can view their profiles right then and there and get the inside story on potential candidates. Plus, it’s free to sign up for an account; with paid recruiting options available to you from there on…
Are online recruiters expensive?
This is a difficult question to answer straight up, as there are factors other than just their final price that should be considered. While it is often on the expensive side, questions like the ones below might well form part of the thought process around whether or not online recruiters are “expensive”:
- Can they find me the very best person for the job?
- How much time do I need to invest in this process?
- Will the candidate fit with my existing team?
These are just a few of the elements that are worth thinking about. You should also consider the potential costs in the unfortunate event of hiring the wrong person. This cost can better explained here:
- Lost profit from poor working practices
- Potential damage to restaurant reputation
- Costs of having to repeat the hiring process
- Increase in staff turnover from other departments
Consider how much time and effort you want to spend on the hiring process and this can help you to assess whether or not it’s worth going with an online recruiter. There are however cost-efficient alternatives (read on!).
What are virtual/online job fairs and do they work?
Like a physical job fair, a virtual job fair is essentially a method in which potential employers can meet with a range of candidates. Because of the more personal nature of these fairs, it can be a really good way of getting a first impression of an individual.
Some of the things that might be worth considering regarding virtual job fairs include:
- It’s a bit harder to get a good read from online on how a person will deal with people — and this is one of the most important aspects of a great restaurant manager’s job.
- Timing: It is perhaps unlikely that a virtual job fair will be running at exactly the same time that you find yourself in the marketplace for a restaurant manager.
So, while a virtual job fair could provide an opportunity to meet face to face with potential candidates via chat rooms, Skype, etc. it’s not one of the more effective ways of finding a great restaurant manager.
Personal recommendations
The power of a personal recommendation should never be underestimated, especially if it is from someone who is related to your own industry. Although it might be worth trying to understand just why the person is being recommended, are they as good at this role as the person recommending them is trying to suggest?
Sign/Notice on your website?
While it might well work for many other businesses, a notice posted on your site can itself easily become the talking point between customers as opposed to how much they enjoyed dining at your establishment.
It might not apply to everyone, but there will almost certainly be clientele which will try to use the hiring of a restaurant manager to their own advantage. This will often become evident in any complaints that might develop and could also feature when settling their bills.
Only half the job is done
Once you have managed to gain a pool of applicants, it is important to know that your task is only half complete; in many respects this is only the top part of the “funnel”. Working on your task of eliminating the lesser suited individuals is likely to take time in your task of seeking out the very best person for your requirements.
This is where we come in. ClearFit is able to provide expert assistance in the profiling of individuals. The use of our unique scoring system and personalized interview questions and techniques makes the hiring process much easier. We can help you to find the very best “fit” candidates for your organization and ensure that the process from beginning to end runs smoothly.
Find Restaurant Manager Online — The Wrap Up
The degree of success that you have will largely depend on the way that you approach things. Hopefully the suggestions in this feature about how to search online may have helped in some ways toward finding a great restaurant manager. It is worth hanging on to the thought that the restaurant manager role is vital to ensure the complete satisfaction of your customers. Ultimately, the person that you employ can easily make the difference between success and failure of your establishment.
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