6 Ways to Improve Hospitality Recruitment at Your Hotel

Hoteliers: it’s a tight labor market out there. And that means hiring for open positions can be incredibly difficult. Consider this fact: the U.S. added 220,000 jobs last month and wages are only growing by 2.5%. That means hospitality recruitment and filling open positions at your hotel is only going to get tougher.

The following hospitality recruitment strategies can be adopted for free or at a very low cost to your property.

Explore the Top Hospitality Recruitment Ideas

1. Offer a flexible work schedule

The millennial workforce is predicted to change working conditions and benefits expectations for new and existing industries up until the year 2030. While a popular demand is a flexible work schedule, working from home simply isn’t an option for most entry-level hotel jobs. However, you can get creative in the schedules that you offer for your employees”many of which may be working other jobs or taking care of their families. Consider allowing your employees to opt-in to a shift schedule that works better with their existing commitments. If a life event occurs in an employee’s life, allow him or her to change the preferred shift time.

Giving your employees options will help you to receive more job applicants and also to help engage your current staff while helping your company to reduce turnover, too.

2. Give rewards for efficient behavior

Traditionally, bonuses are offered as a perk for higher-level positions as a reward for hitting certain KPIs. But, this perk can be expanded to hourly-workers. Offer rewards to your employees for meeting certain expectations”such as three months of perfect attendance”to help engage your current workforce. This will help to improve your employee retention rate”or a number of employees who stay at their job”as well as improving your recruitment efforts.

How many more applicants would you receive if you list that bonus incentives are available to all employees, even entry-level ones?

3. Use clear language in job descriptions

Give your candidates the information that they need to know in a way that’s easy to read. This goes for job duties, experience requirements, skill requirements, and next steps to express interest. A Forbes article describes the importance of using friendlier job titles for positions, and the same can be said about job descriptions.

Another thing to consider is the fact that not every job seeker is going to speak English natively. And if a job seeker can’t read a job posting, it’s highly unlikely he or she will apply for the job even if they have the qualified credentials for the gig.

4. Prioritize referrals from current employees

You have an entire pool of candidates at the ready. So where are they? They’re with your current employee population.

Your current employees know the ins and outs of the job better than anyone else”possibly even better than you do! So prioritize and set clear goals for following through with employee referrals, such as 40% of new hires recruited from employee referrals. If you are able, offer an incentive for a successful employee referral, such as a $50 gift card or a free dinner. If you have absolutely no budget to offer an incentive, don’t fret. Many employees would like to refer their friends for open positions solely because it makes them a good friend.

5. Offer unique job perks

Most hotels will offer similar compensation and benefits packages, such as an industry-standard salary and no health benefits for part-time hourly workers. Put your hospitality recruiting efforts light years ahead of your competitors’ by offering benefits unique to your hotel.

A recent study showed that a job description offering daily payment versus weekly or bi-weekly payment received nearly double the applicants. To get ideas of what perks you could potentially offer, ask your existing staff what types of perks they’d like. This could improve employee engagement of your existing workers and help your recruiting efforts at the same time!

6. Contact local hospitality programs

Get ahead of your hotel recruiting process and start recruiting early at your local college or university. Most colleges have hospitality management programs, so start there to recruit high-quality talent before your competitors. Obtaining talent early in their careers will help improve loyalty to your company. And a little work and training will go a long way since these students have already learned the major skills required for success in hospitality.

Unemployment is at a nearly all-time low since the Great Depression. So hoteliers need to use more aggressive hospitality recruitment strategies to fill their open positions. If your property’s budget isn’t due for an increase in order to attract more applicants, you’re not alone. Many cutting-edge benefits trends are of little-to-no-cost to your bottom line and (bonus!) can help your hotel’s ROI while saving the budget for other expenses. The best advice for improving your hospitality recruitment efforts is to start using these methods now, and get ahead of your competitors.

Up next, discover the top hotel sales interview questions to ask every candidate.

How do you manage hospitality recruitment at your hotel? Share your favorite tactics on Twitter!