How to Find the Right Restaurant Staff

restaurant staff

We’ve all been there – the new chef just burned their third dish, the new waiter is flirting with the customers, dropped the entire dessert course, or simply didn’t show up for their shift. 

Even the most well-run restaurants are high-stress places, with gruelling work hours and physically taxing tasks.

The truth of the matter is your employees will make or break your restaurant. Energetic, friendly, consistent, and most importantly, competent employees will keep your customers coming back and encourage diners to tell their friends and family about you.

The right staff will make running your restaurant a dream, but hiring the wrong person at the wrong time will quickly turn that dream into a nightmare.

Waiting on tables, cooking, and even cleaning requires more skill than most first-time employers might realise. It isn’t a numbers game. The wrong hire will chase away customers, churn out low-quality food, and disappear when you need them most.

We’ve compiled a list of four things you need to know to ensure that your next hire is right for the job!

 

Hire to needs

Every position is different. Do your research. How intense is the workload for this position? How many hours are expected? What level of experience is preferred? How much can you afford to pay? 

 

Identify Candidates

Create a profile of the ideal employee for your open position, and then scour job boards, as well as that stack of CVs you have in your inbox to find the employee that best matches the profile.

It’s very likely that you won’t find the perfect match, which is why the goal here is to build up a pool of options.

 

Verify Details

Here’s where many restaurants fall short in the hiring process. They trust the CV. 

The world out there is tough. Many have lost their jobs, meaning that people are desperate. While there are a lot of honest job seekers out there, there are more than a few that are not above padding their CVs with skills and experience they simply don’t have.

Even the interview isn’t enough anymore. Trust your gut, and make sure that you verify every piece of information you receive. A bit of extra work now will save you hours, even days of wasted time later. 

Contact references, talk to previous coworkers, check for criminal records, and if they exist, talk to any parole officers. 

Then, when you are certain that your potential employee is exactly who they say they are, move on to the next step. 

 

Do a trial run

There is no substitute for a trial run. Test your potential employees by having them work a shift or two to see how they perform in a real setting. This also has the added benefit of letting the employee get an idea of what is expected of them. Once the trial run is over, talk to your other employees to see what they think, and if they give you some positive feedback, make the hire. 

Following these steps may be time-consuming, but it will ensure that you have the best chance of making the right hire for your organization.

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