The Talent Pool Is Getting Deep

A coworker/friend of mine just applied for a server position at a number of San Francisco restaurants. The response she received from several managers? They are being flooded with resumes from recently laid-off professionals desperately seeking employment. Real estate agents, financial services, former small business owners, advertising professionals, you get the idea. These are highly qualified individuals, college-credentialed, with 'real world' job experience fighting for food server positions.

If you are hiring FOH, it might be time to expand your FOH job descriptions to include skills and experience that would benefit your operations. Also, the last thing you want in your restaurant is an overachieving ex-professional-high-achiever-type who is bored and unchallenged. Time to create some outlets for these talented individuals, perhaps a social media site, a blog, an updated website, a Flickr page, whatever.

Stop looking at FOH as minimum wage, hourly employees. Tap into these folks, give them an opportunity to be creative and collaborative!

Tags: fohboh, hiring, servers, social networking for restaurants

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Permalink Reply by David Rose on March 22, 2010 at 4:35pm

Many hiring professionals take for granted the number of available workers. Too often, hiring leaders think there are an abundance of people available, so they begin to think in a cookie cutter mentality. You know what I mean...they'll only look at candidates with comparable experience from a competitor.

Instead, companies would benefit more by exploring candidates with transferable skills...in addition to their "normal" candidate pool. Someone with outside (of industry) experience, may have a greater learning curve with regard to systems, process and pace, but that person may also have the passion, charisma, energy, enthusiasm and perspective to open new avenues.

It's too easy to over-refine the search for talent. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Hiring leaders just need to get better at connecting with candidates, and with that come a better understanding of fit.

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Permalink Reply by Giuseppe De Carlo on April 21, 2010 at 5:17am

as an employer, you always try to find professinal help, this means people with know how in the field of work in this specific bussines, though there may be alot of talent out there but not with hospitality knowledge, training a mature professional person is much harder then a junior non professional. most restauranteurs dont have the time or patince to train, Giuseppe

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Permalink Reply by Tony Garner on October 21, 2010 at 6:19pm

One more thing don't always say WE WANT EXPERIENCE. That can take some of your best workers away. I had never served before, but they gave me a chance. I relished the job oppurtunity and excelled in it. I went from server to manager in a little under two years in a CORPORATE restaraunt, just because they gave me a chance.