Write down key brand value and store culture

Don't you think the brand asset and staffs have the strong connection? It's very clear that the staff is one of the business assets, and is the one directly deliver the key brand value of your business to customers. So that only when writing out your key brand value, you will have the first imagines of what type of staff you should hire. Without this phase, your potential pool of staffs is everyone; with a brand, you can start to narrow down what you’re looking for in a good candidate.

Make Job Description

Once you’ve defined your brand and culture, the next step is to write the clear and specific job description – as well as a description of the kind of person who would best fit the job. So what is in details you should do at this stage?

1. Discuss the job details with current staffs in the same position you are recruiting for. No one else, included you understands the scope of work of the job than your staffs. Since not only basic skills or requirements but personal and practical sharing of how to be into the job you can get from the staff.

• Use the SMART rule when writing the job description:

  • S: Specific in Scope of Work.
  • M: Measurable in Work Responsibilities.
  • A: Achievable in Number Target.
  • R: Realistic in Scale of Work Area.
  • T: Timing in Working Shift

• Focus on "don't you think you are suitable for this job?" instead of "you need many skills and competencies for this job".

• Use the consistent template of your business to write the job description:

  • Brand Header.
  • Fonts & Colors.
  • General Information about your business.
  • Layout and Structure.

• Get all your wants and needs on paper first. Then, go back and rank your preferred characteristics from most important to least important. Don’t delete any, just rank them. That way, you can see that, for example, passion and a willingness to learn rank above experience and talent. You can then use these preferences to find the staff who fits the most important characteristics of your restaurant.

• Use outlines & keywords with the simple language to emphasize key things of the job and keep the writing in short. Beside that, to make the job description more interesting and impressive, you should use your own writing instead of referencing other sources, combining with the storytelling way, and including the specialized terms of the position to highlight the spirit of the job.

You should write a job and staff description for each position in your coffee shop|restaurant|bar. Use these descriptions as templates for all your hiring. This is a good thing to do even if you never post them. Writing down these descriptions helps you keep the important traits for each position in your head so you can always be on the lookout for someone who fits the bill. However, the business can change every day, the job requirement is not the exception. So that, to meet the new business requirement, you should keep updating the job description.

Design Job Ad

Don't you know that the labor market for F&B industry is now very competitive? Of course, it's not difficult to find candidates, but it seems very challenging to find the suitable and prospective one for your business. So that what angles impact to the job apply decision?

• The popularity and reputation of the brand.
• The attraction of the job description.
• And the impression of the job advertisement.

Social Network is now developing more than our expectation. As the result, it is becoming the main platform for posting the new job. And with the huge information, users see every day, you should understand the term of "6s impression". It means your job post needs to be outstanding in the newsfeed of users to catch their attention just in 6 seconds. So don't ignore this stage if you want to reach as many potential candidates as possible.

• Design an interesting job ad.

  • Use unique call-to-action slogans that visualizing the store spirit ("Don't you want us?", "Join X-Force of Lili's Hub Now" or "At Lili's Hub, every day as the Waiter is a new day of joys and experiences"🤪, "Our customers want to be served by you" instead of popular terms (We want you or We need you 🙄).
  • Share images that highlight best moments of your staffs.
  • Include key requirements of the job.

• Keep writing the status of the job ad in short and use the interactive way to make it closer to the audience.

Publish Job Advertising

This is where all your hard work in the previous two steps starts to have the outcome. It is the point at which your distinctive brand and your interesting job description combine to bring great staffs to your doorstep. Before you go out and post your job to all the recruiting websites, think about your demand first. Do you really need to pull a sous chef from very far versus your store location, or could your needs be filled by a recent graduate of a local culinary program?

So let's go through points that support you to find the suitable platform for job post:

• Is the job position very important to your store?
• Is the platform potential to reach the candidates for this job?
• How rush this job is?

There are main platforms for your post you should consider:

• Your Website.
• Your Fan pages
• F&B Facebook Groups.
• Work Pages.
• Headhunter.

Scan CV

With unimportant position, you can pass this step to move to the Interview section. But with very important positions or many applicants for the same position, this stage will support you to save time for the Interview. It determines whether a candidate is qualified for a role based on his or her education, experience, and other information captured on their resume. In a nutshell, it’s a form of pattern matching between a job’s requirements and the qualifications of a candidate based on their resume. Before start reading the resume, you should make sure you have the list of role’s minimum and preferred qualifications. Both types of qualifications should be related to on-the-job performance and are ideally captured in the job description. So how to screen:

1. Screening resumes based on minimum qualifications: mandatory qualifications that a candidate must meet to be able to do the job. A simple example of a minimum qualification for the waiter position is whether the candidate is age legally able to work for the job.
2. Screening resumes based on preferred qualifications: non-mandatory characteristics that would make someone a stronger candidate for the job. A common example of a preferred qualification for the waiter position is whether the candidate has prior waiter experience.
3. Shortlisting candidates based on the minimum and preferred qualifications.

For high volume recruitment or low volume applicant, generally, all candidates that meet the minimum qualifications move forward to the interview process. For low volume recruitment or high volume applicant, generally, only the top few candidates that meet both the minimum and preferred qualifications receive an interview.

Interview

This is the point where you can discern things like how enthusiastic and personable a candidate is. Moreover, you should invite one of the staffs at the recruited position to join the interview team. Since she|he can support you to explore angles of candidates you may not find out. Not only experiences and skills but behaviors, attitues and especially cultural fit of candidates are aspects you should pay attention to:

• How do the two of you interact during the interview?
• How does she react when introduced to other team members?
• Does he get excited when talking about things he enjoys?
• How does she overcome practical situations?
• How does he feel about the work environment?

These little indicators can tell you a lot about how a person will behave on the job. Be sure to note these intangibles on each candidate’s application so you can go back and see who most closely matches your idea of the suitable staff. After finish interviewing all candidates, you and your team should sit dowm together to discuss and make the decision.

Offer and Arrange Orientation

When finding the right one, give them the offer as soonest as you can, share with them all the benefit and policy to make them well informed and reassure that they accept the offer without any concern.

Besides that, before onboarding officially, you should arrange a meeting to meet the new staff to introduce your store. This orientation meeting is like a friendly sharing to support the new team member to have the first look of your business: work environment, stories behind the establishment, functions & staffs or brand fanpage|instagram 😎, etc. Don't understate this step, it will make your new staff feel belong to your organization and motivate his|her confident to start the first working day.

In conclusion, many business owners don't want to build a completed process for their recruitment. They may think it wastes time or it is not worth for focusing on, especially for normal positions: waiter, cashier, etc. If you are one of them, just think about "How nightmarish you will see when you have the wrong staffs". Customer unsatisfaction, Staff disengagement, Brand Reputation affection are just a few consequences you may get. At the end of the day, these will turn out to numbers: revenue|profit decreasing. Don't you want to just stand and look all things going wrong just because of a wrong staff? This is also the reason why F&B business has the serious plan for recruitment and training staffs tend to find the popularity and sustainable growth. So now the choice is yours, let's start doing the right thing to find the right people by the right method for your F&B business