Foodservice forum: Recruitment

We ask our experts: how do you use recruitment to drive your business forward?

Kerry Crompton-Harris
Director of people and resourcing, Compass Group UK and Ireland
We are a people-powered business, so attracting the best people and keeping them within our organisation is crucial to our success. As we rebuild our industry after the pandemic, we need to be focused on making every job rewarding and showcasing how hospitality can provide great career opportunities for everyone – regardless of background or education.

We are part of a barrierless industry, which means that you don’t need specific qualifications to join. We can offer skills training, as well as career opportunities and flexibility – and I can think of no greater example of levelling up.

Last year, we launched Our Social Promise, an ambition to positively impact one million lives by 2030, from both within and outside the organisation, through job creation, education, training, community and charitable engagement. Part of this strategy includes the development of our people, but importantly we also focus on communities we operate in, such as outreach to schools. This will help children become business- and employment-ready, and start to close the skills gap alongside demonstrating the kind of opportunities and pathways available. We need to find and utilise the channels to let people know about our exciting industry and what we can offer.

Another focus for us has been strengthening and establishing partnerships with supply-chain partners and charities, who work with people experiencing barriers to employment, such as the long-term unemployed. This helps us offer opportunities to people who might not have considered a place like Compass before, plus these people give us the chance to hire someone with potential who can learn and train on the job. We have some really great examples of people that have succeeded through these routes.

Importantly, we have also looked to make our recruitment processes more streamlined with an innovative tech-led approach. This includes overhauling the application process to transform the hiring experience to be faster, more efficient and intuitive.

We have looked at making our website and tech mobile-friendly, alongside introducing a chat bot feature and even trialling gamification to stand out in a busy space. This also results in a much quicker response times and, as new generations enter the job market, we have found efficiency and speed are integral.

Notably, our approach is driven by data and insights, with a multi-channel candidate attraction strategy using social media, aggregators and job boards to actively engage with candidates throughout the entire recruitment process. This way we can share key messages about why our industry is a great place to be and the opportunities we have available.
As part of Our Social Promise commitment, we’re investing in our talent and their skills for the future, through schemes like apprenticeships and we’ve had great success with Kickstart. Last year, we launched our internal Career Pathways structure that shows people such as cleaning and culinary workers, through to our central functions and support staff, how to ‘Move Up’, ‘Move Across’ or simply ‘Master your Craft’ – offering learning, advice, mentoring and progression guides.

Ultimately, my biggest tip would be to focus on the candidate, via an attractive brand and employee value proposition that stands out from the crowd. We are seeing that more candidates value the holistic offering, such as flexible hours and extended benefits beyond the norm. 

Additionally, feedback on the recruitment processes shows that the speed of application and hiring response are key. In many regions there are more role vacancies than applicants; therefore, response times and efficiency is of the essence in order to get the best people.

Arran McDowell
People director, BaxterStorey
The hospitality industry continues to experience an ongoing skills shortage due to lasting impacts felt from Covid-19 and the decrease in overseas workers following Brexit. It’s a tough climate with no easy short-term solution, and with the talent pool being significantly decreased, we need to be more competitive than ever in order to attract people into the industry and, most importantly, retain them.

While our focus for 2023 remains consistent with previous years in promoting the career opportunities available within hospitality, we’re seeing a bigger demand on what we offer culturally and creating a more diverse and inclusive work environment. 

We see ourselves as a brand behind great businesses; we work across an incredible breadth of sectors and this diversity gives people the opportunity to gain experience in many different hospitality settings. The uniqueness of contract catering is the ability to evolve and develop your career in any direction you want, and this is particularly appealing to the new generation entering the workforce who want careers that give them flexibility and variety.

Attracting people to your business is only half the battle; the investment in retention and giving team members a positive experience so they can see the growth and development opportunities is where it really pays off.

One of the wider recruitment challenges is making our sector appealing to young people, breaking the preconceived idea that hospitality is just a job, poorly paid and doesn’t offer long-term careers. It’s important to engage with schools to give young people and their families more insight into career journeys and showcase training programmes, the variety in workplace locations and the availability of flexible working in the sector.

Investing in our training programmes, so our teams can invest in themselves, is a key principle of ours. We regularly review and evolve our training academies to give our teams relevant, modern learning that is engaging and progressive. One example is our new Culinary Arts programme for senior chefs, which is a jam-packed 12-month vocational course designed to develop skills across financial awareness and essential skills within fish, pastry and seasonality, all supported with study tours to connect with suppliers.

The talent pipeline is an area that we are looking to strengthen, by investing in technology that gives our teams more autonomy over the recruitment process and access to an in-house database of candidates that has already shown increased interest in working with us. Being part of a larger group – Westbury Street Holdings – means we have a large talent pool to draw upon. Where one applicant may not be a great fit in one brand, they may be suitable for a role in BaxterStorey, and vice versa. Being smarter in our recruitment process, and giving our teams more involvement in proactively sourcing candidates, is an exciting approach for us this year.

The industry needs to present a career in hospitality as one that can bring long-term job satisfaction and opportunities, rather than be used as a stepping-stone on the way to a more ‘prosperous’ career path. Hospitality is one of the few industries you can join with little experience that, with the right support and development, can lead to a long, successful and highly skilled career.

There aren’t many businesses you can walk into with little to no skills or qualifications and develop into a chief executive, managing director, executive chef or general manager – and that is an exciting story to tell.

You may also be interested in…