Reader: hiring good managers gets even harder for industry

Nation's Restaurant News,  Sept 17, 2007  by Tom Meredith

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Editor, NRN:

I am writing in response to your article, "Operators: Web-based tests aid in hiring right to cut turnover costs," July 16, page 1.

The trend to utilize the Internet for pre-employment screening is gaining in popularity for hourly positions since it has been used so heavily for management selection.

The article quotes Phil Martin, who said, "I always felt the biggest weakness we had in operations was teaching managers how to screen applicants."

I believe unit-level management has been hard-hit by the pressures of bottom-line management to the extent that training has been vastly reduced, decision-making has been simplified or removed, and accountability increased. These factors have been combined to make some believe they can reduce salaries by hiring less-experienced managers, thus forcing more-experienced managers to leave the hospitality business or at least leave casual dining.

The problem of quality hiring has always been prevalent in our industry. But it is accentuated now due to the increased hurdles for the process, the glut of less-experienced managers doing the hiring, and the reduction in people willing to enter our industry.

The beginnings of a solution lie deep in the management culture of an organization. When I first began my management career in the 1970s with Steak & Ale, Norman Brinker had created a culture of teamwork and training. Managers were constantly being developed and taught how to exceed expectations, but in a way that you felt supported the team and did not threaten with a "fix it or be fired" approach.

We were taught to spend time with each individual who wanted to apply for a position, get to know their character as best as you can in a short period of time, and explain the expectations of the position and the commitment necessary to reach those expectations.

We were taught to treat even the obvious nonfit candidates as a sales-building project and not to allow anyone to feel diminished if they did not fit our needs. When someone was hired, the training they received was thorough and treated very seriously. The other staff members and management represented a team that was there to assist new employees to succeed and were not there to catch them doing something wrong.

If we return to the basics of hospitality and encourage the hiring of pleasant, positive and sincere people, increase our confidence and ability to train people in the mechanics of a position, and create a secure and pleasant environment in which to work, many of our hiring challenges will go away as will frequency of turnover. I do not say that assessment testing and other evaluation tools do not have a place--they certainly do.

However, these are tools to help build a culture, and we must be very careful how we use the tools in order to get the intended value from them. If they are used as an "end-all, be-all" in hiring decisions, we miss the opportunity to nurture and develop our management and hourly staff.

I question the perception created when management candidates wishing to submit a resume are funneled into a website application and assessment process, and are accepted or rejected with no human contact. What kind of statement does that make to the candidate about how the company values them? To succeed in the hospitality industry, you should at the very least be friendly.

The mind-set in an interview should be to look for a reason to include a person on your team, not to look for a reason to screen them out. A company should not need to protect itself from people who want to work for them. You won't hire everyone you meet, but each meeting is a small community relations project. If we can remove some of the negative pressure on our unit managers and encourage them to do something as simple as say "please" and "thank you" to the staff, guests and each other, that alone will begin to impact the hire right philosophy.

Tom Meredith

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Scotch Plains, N.J.

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