The key to hiring success

Talk to anyone about hiring and they will tell you to hire for attitude not experience.

Although it's a known fact, how many of us actually do it?

Most will say they do. But what they really do is take a small pool of EXPERIENCED candidates and interview them for attitude. They choose the best attitude amongst the experienced short list.

The cost to train an inexperienced employee is high. Yet the cost to replace an entire team decimated by an experienced jerk is obviously much higher.

The restaurant industry is no different. Because restaurants are on the front lines of business warfare, this challenge comes up often. Hire for skill and try to untrain bad habits or hire for attitude and try to train skill. In restaurants, the time required to train skill is short compared to more skilled jobs corporate jobs.

Hiring an employee in a restaurant is a pain in the ass. It's not like the trainers don't have anything else to do. It's not like business likes to pay for the extra cost of training labour. There is no HR department...

Yet hiring is still necessary.

Here are two tips that I learned for hiring success in the restaurant industry.

First of all, get referrals from existing employees. Not only do birds of a feather flock together, but now you have a mentor, a training buddy, a support team for your new employee.

How often have you seen a new employee get plucked to death by the team? A friend won't let this happen to the new recruit. A friend will bring the employee under her wing and protect her from the predators while feeding her advice and tips. 

The other phenomenon I witnessed in these scenarios is the creation of study buddies. The friend trains the new recruit off company time, which saves valuable labour costs.

You don't always get enough referrals so you may have to advertise the position or review the pile of resumes in the file. Trying to get through the bullshit that resumes dish out, a decision is made who will be interviewed.

The second tip for hiring is more ninja style.

Hire for attitude. But hire for a specific attitude. Look for someone who has the ability to CARE. 

Trying to find an employee who cares can be difficult. Everyone cares about something. Look specifically for someone who has a deep desire to help others.

How do you assess that?

If you're hiring a part-time employee look to university, college or high school kids. More specifically hire students who are studying or wanting to study Education or Nursing. 

If you're hiring a fulltime employee, ask them if they had to do it all over again and had to go back to school, what field of study would they take. Again, look for the Education or Nursing answer.

I know it's crazy. I stumbled across this in my third year of business. I never had one bad hire using this methodology.  You can end the interview after this simple question. Nothing else will give you more information.

It worked for me and I'll bet it will work for you. Just saying...