How to work out what’s needed for your next hospitality hire

Your job descriptions should align with your company’s vision, values and culture as well as being the foundation for your hiring and recruiting strategies.

Take time when creating your job description ensuring it sets a coherent expectations, which lets applicants and your current employees know exactly what knowledge, skills, and abilities are required.

Writing and reviewing job descriptions

The first step to achieving an enticing job description would be, to understand and highlight the qualities and characteristics your company looks for in an ideal candidate.

The common difficulty when writing hospitality job descriptions is to not only define what the role involves but, including intangibles like cultural fit and the values that boost that individuality aspect of your business.

A strategically and well thought job description helps everyone involved in your recruitment processes understand the role and the skills needed to fulfil it. This can also be an anchor for performance evaluations, salary negotiations, and brand value reviews; and can also highlight any gaps in your existing workforce.

In terms of reviewing, naturally as a new position opens automatically you need to create a new job description. Businesses constantly encounter challenges and changes that affect the way they operate; whether that be expansion, tech updates, restructuring etc. It’s a prompt to review your job descriptions to see if they remain relevant.

Smaller hospitality businesses, due to a lower number of employees and quick growth, might need to review their job descriptions more often.

Hospitality job description checklist

When constructing an ideal job description, it’s valuable to consider following checklist to ensure it captures your needs for you next hospitality hire.

Here is a guideline containing the key questions you may want to answer before publishing any positions:

Check the existing job description details for accuracy.

Does it still adequately reflect the job role? Have you included all the responsibilities involved in the role?

Is the job described well

Will it inspire and engage hospitality job seekers and encourage them to consider joining your brand?

Is the salary (or range) correct?

Have you included all the benefits that are included in the package? Is the process for salary reviews and negotiations accurate?

Have you included information about career progression and promotion?

Do you have a clear career path for your new hospitality hire? What initiatives do you have in place so they get a sense that you are also invested in them?

Have you included the intangibles?

Think about the soft skills, values, qualities needed to excel?

Involving your team in reviews

Involving your management team and other employees is very favourable when reviewing job descriptions. The input and feedback you receive will ultimately highlight any errors or perhaps things to expand on and gives an additional perspective on what you’ve produced.

Your existing team will have first-hand knowledge of the skills and responsibilities needed, and any elements of the role that may not be in the current job description.

You may want to consider using templates as a starting point; having a set of hospitality job description templates can save time and streamline your hiring and HR process.

Giving your HR team or recruitment manager job descriptions in a standardised format, covering roles at all levels of seniority, will ensure the consistency of hiring practices across your business as it grows. Templates can also be a strong tailoring tool to suit individual job roles and descriptions.

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