If your like me, or any leader out there, it’s scary opening yourself up in trust to hiring someone. For many years before making any offer whether it be someone full time or part time I would lay awake at night weeks after hiring them wondering if I made the right decision.
Seriously, I would roll over on my left side, and stare blankly at my phone sitting on the side table with my mind running around asking questions about can they do this job, were they going to fit in, how much have they learned, are they on course to start adding value, am I going to have to find someone new, and my personal late night favorite, did I make the right choice? And those fear based questions are what I want us to talk about this week.
Because, when you make that offer you should feel confident that this new person is going to make a positive impact on your organization.
How to Hire A Great Hotel Team and Staff
So let’s start with a few quick wins you can start doing today when you interview to get that confidence back.
1. Have a set interview plan
That’s right. You need to have a set plan and not a 30+ pg document from HR that talks all about the details of the position you're hiring for and about the dress code. Seriously, that’s what a lot of managers receive when they ask for help from their corporate office. You just need a simple hiring plan.
Your plan needs to walk you through how to get to know your applicants, how they can get to know you and your team better, and it needs to be simple enough that if you are out anyone can conduct the interview.
So, having a simple 3 step plan is a great way to start building a good foundation of trust in yourself that you are making a good decision.
2. Stop asking Google what to ask applicants
Don’t get me wrong, Google is great for many things but a lot of the interview questions out there don’t necessarily fit in with your company culture or relate to the position you are hiring for. An example of this, is the question,
“What kind of tree are you?”
Sorry, asking this type of question is not going to be helpful for someone applying to be a hotel staff accountant, housekeeper, or General Manager. So be specific. Think about what it takes for someone to excel in the role you are hiring for. So questions such as, “What type of accrual might you need during the end of month close?” would be a great question for someone applying to be a hotel accountant. Or, “You have only 2 sets of linen with you and have another 3 rooms to clean; how would you handle this situation?” for someone applying as a housekeeping supervisor.
The questions you ask need to be specific to the role in which you are hiring for and this leads to building trust that the person is thinking through the role. When someone positions themselves that they are already doing the role then you can be positive they are looking for ways to add value.
3. This next tip is gold to making sure you hired the right person so come on back to me here if you are multi-tasking. I want you do ask yourself, “Did the applicant ask questions during the interview process”
Did they ask questions such as,
“I noticed you mentioned one of the responsibilities being a,b,c have you ever considered x,y,z?”
“My last company handled a situation like you explained this way, do you think that would work here, why or why not?”
“Can you explain that?”
You might be thinking, yeah but those are crazy specific and no one asks questions like that. And I would say, your wrong, good applicants ask questions like that. When I’m bringing on new hotel staff accountants out of every single person I hire they ask some version of a question back to me or my team like that I just mentioned. They become invested in finding ways they can take their experiences and apply them to our company. When you are interviewing someone and they are asking you these type of “why” questions you know you have a Rock Star. And when someone isn’t afraid to ask for clarification they have a never stop learning attitude and will be a great asset to your team. So you need to listen to the questions your applicants are asking you because they are a great insight into that person being a excellent hire.
4. And a BONUS tip for making sure the person you hire can do the job is to look at your culture
That’s right your company culture has a direct impact on whether or not they will succeed. If it’s a organization that is open to communication, feedback, and pushing others to take on more and more responsibility then the person you bring on will feed into that. Not only that, because they are learning about their role during training they will also help cement the roles and responsibilities of the current teammates completing those tasks currently. TIP: So our tip for this week is to no longer worry about “can this person do the job” because when you put into practice these 4 tips you will once again feel confident you made a great hiring decision for your team. Here they are again:
Have a set interview plan
Ask questions that pertain to the role your interviewing for
Listen to the questions the applicant asks you
Your bonus tip – refer back to your team’s culture
And these interviewing tips are important to you and your team because they remove any stress of did you make the right decision weeks after someone was hired but before that person even starts you are confident they can do the job, your excited to train them, your ready to watch them excel in that role.
Now, if you don’t have a interviewing plan, are unsure of what to ask, and are up at night wondering if this person can do the job then jump over to our simple interviewing course, Interviewing Made Simple.
Here we walk you through a simple, easy to implement interviewing plan that removes the mystery of how to hire A+ Talent. You can check it out at www.hotelsolutions.info/trainings.
Alright, I hope that was helpful! If you haven’t signed up for our weekly videos, please do so below and if you know someone this would help send it their way! All right, talk to you soon!
