How to Attract Top Talent to Your Restaurant

Attracting top talent and chefs to your restaurant can be tricky. But it doesn’t need to be impossible. Using a recruiter or national job service platform to advertise across a large geographic area, making your opportunity better than others, taking your time sorting through applicants and making the hiring process as much about your potential employee as it is about your place of business will all go a long way towards a great hire you and your customers will be glad for. If you are looking for ways to attract top talent in your restaurant, here are some best practice ideas for you.

Cast a wide net.

While you don’t necessarily need a hiring team, using tools readily available online will help you get the word out about whatever opportunity your business has to offer. Recruiting software, a plan for hiring, an interview scheduling tool and a reasonable budget will take a big part of the hassle out of the interview process for you.

Talent doesn’t come cheap. You want to remember this not only in the salary you’re offering, but in how you advertise for the position. Just like you’d go to the best places you could find for restaurant equipment, the same is true when looking for an employee with experience in areas you need. A Craigslist ad or simple box ad in the local classifieds won’t cut it the same way as a recruiting process targeting the entire country on the bigger screen. Plan to pay for ads on professional listing services or bite that bullet and pay for the recruiter to save time.

Offer perks and benefits.

You get what you pay for. If talent’s what you need, you need to make the partnership worth it to the talent on the other end of this arrangement. Before you even begin the hiring process, think about what you can afford. If you need to make cost cuts to pay for someone with great experience or whom you have a personal connection with, think about moving money around.

Through gofoodservice.com, for example, you can find affordable and quality supplies for your entire restaurant. From kitchen tools to the dining room, that one stop online all the way through to restaurant janitorial supplies could save you money and time you can put into the interview process and applicant. This will create a ripple effect; your flexibility and open-mindedness will open you up to the right candidate.

If you aren’t sure what to offer, have a conversation. While you’ll know in general what you can afford to pay a fantastic manager or chef, it’s always good to be transparent with potential employees about their needs too. Whether it’s health insurance, bottom lines, or concerns about relocation expenses, these are important things to discuss during the initial interview. In the end, you want your job opportunity to feel as much like a gift to them as they do to you and your place of business.

Show why you’re different.

Money and a great benefits package isn’t always enough to attract talent. For some, whose passion is the restaurant business or food, it’s also about brand and reputation. If you are a newer or smaller business, it might be more difficult to bring a big name in. However, in showing a potential candidate why your business is worth investing in, you might get further. Maybe it’s an incentive package or that you’d give a potential chef full control of the menu. Before hiring talent, think of what you can offer that’s different.

Communication, a fair benefits package, and an open mind about the potential partnership will go a long way in bringing top talent to your place of business. Like with any business decision, making the hiring process a priority will help you go farther in coming up successful. If great candidate experience is what you’re after, say it. If you are looking for someone with experience in administrative tasks, say that, too. In being clear in what you’re looking for and encouraging job candidates to be transparent too, you’re more likely to cook up a partnership you’ll both be happy with.