Working in hospitality can be pretty difficult at times, working long hours and late nights while dealing with rude customers, the skills needed are quite specific and unavoidable. This blog post will tell you a few of the hospitality skills that can’t be faked, making any recruiter or hiring manager’s job easier when looking for the best hospitality workers out there.
1) Professionalism:
This skill is important in all positions, but in hospitality is important in 2 ways – appearance and reviews. Reviews are especially important, with websites like TripAdvisor becoming more popular it is important that your staff create a good impression, or bad experiences will be spread across the web for potential customers to see. So, your employees need to be able to deal with customers and manage complaints if they arise.
This skill can be seen in the way candidates are interviewed. If they have previous hospitality experience them how they have dealt with complaints before, if not ask them how they would handle this situation.
2) Attentiveness:
This relates to how they deal with customers. While customers can be irritating, customers need to be treated with the attitude ‘the customer is always right’ (even if they’re not). Most customers are more accommodating than we’d expect, but it’s important that employees acknowledge problems in a timely manner, and that customers are assured that the problem is being fixed.
Similar to the previous skill, you can find out if a candidate is attentive by giving them a hypothetical question and asking them how they would deal with it. Make sure that they would keep the customer in the loop as this is the most important thing.
3) Flexibility:
Hospitality is always unpredictable, and this skill is the most vital when you are looking for new employees. Candidates need to be aware that they may have to work outside of their scheduled hours, and may have to complete tasks that do not feature on their job description.
One of the best ways to prepare people for this is to make sure you don’t sugarcoat the fact that they will be working long shifts or could get called in at short notice. Anyone who has worked in hospitality before will expect this, so shouldn’t be scared away
4) Calmness:
If someone can stay calm in the middle of a stressful situation then they are pretty suitable for hospitality jobs. Being able to juggle multiple tasks and stay calm while doing so is crucial.
The best way to test this is to give them an exercise to do, and the best example of this is a trial shift in your business. This gives you and your current employees the best idea of how they would get on in the role they are applying for.
5) Sales:
Being able to sell and upsell is a skill that all hospitality workers should have. Obviously one of the main parts of working in hospitality is being able to make money, so ensure that your staff can shift whatever you are trying to sell.
To be a good sales person you should be enthusiastic and receptive, so put yourself in the customers shoes in order to get an idea of their sales skills.
I hope this blog post has given you an idea of some of the hospitality skills that can’t be faked, and you now feel ready to hire the best hospitality staff out there. If you need help writing killer job adverts that will attract your dream candidates then check out our free guide!