Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction
Experienced restaurant owners know that great team members are the lifeblood of their business. Consistently hiring A-players, however, can be a monthly or even weekly struggle. Many restaurateurs and franchisees did not get their start in recruiting, and without a little guidance and a few resources, it’s all too easy to get stuck in a turnover loop, making bad hire after bad hire. What’s worse: the costs of a bad hire in the food-service industry are multiplied by the negative impact these team members can have on your brand and customer perception. Dissatisfied employees can cost you time, money, and customer loyalty. At CareerPlug, we see great team members as multipliers, who build up your restaurant’s brand and reputation daily. Each hire is an investment in the future of your business, so don’t settle for just anyone with a pulse – start making predictable great hires.
One Bad Hire Can Leave a Permanent Mark on Your Brand
With the growth of local consumer review outlets, like Yelp, Google, and TripAdvisor, restaurateurs and franchisees have come to know the benefits and risks of online reviews all too well. Word-of-mouth has long been the most important marketing channel for the restaurant industry, and, for better and worse, online reviews have been multiplying the reach of word-of-mouth for years. Online reviews usually shape a customer’s impression and expectation of your restaurant before they even walk in the door. Team members are responsible for customer experience in every aspect of the restaurant operations, from their smiles table-side or at the register to their attitudes when cleaning and closing the store.
At many restaurants, quick-serve and full service, one toxic attitude can drag down the entire team. When the team isn’t playing at their best, customer complaints arise at all levels of the dining experience, not just employee-customer interaction. Put simply, one bad hire can take a heavy toll on a restaurant’s reputation, and in our digital age, that impact can be permanent. Many food-service team members, especially those who have built their career in the service industry, are hardworking, dedicated, and satisfied with their jobs. There is a method for hiring this level of talent repeatedly and predictably, and at CareerPlug, we call this method employee benchmarking.
Cloning Success with Predictable Hiring
Wouldn’t it be great if you could clone your top performers? At CareerPlug, we encourage all our restaurant owners and managers to benchmark their top team members on personality traits, such as integrity and service orientation, and technical ability, such as math and verbal aptitude. Leveraging this information to screen and qualify applicants can reveal red flags with applicants and highlight areas of candidate fit. For instance, when hiring a cashier for quick-serve, benchmarking friendly, honest, and detail-oriented team members for integrity and mathematical aptitude can help you identify candidates in your applicant pool that would be a clear fit for the role. Take the guesswork out of hiring and protect your restaurant’s reputation by developing an actionable understanding of what makes your team thrive. Then repeat the process!
Predictable Hiring is Just an Email Away
At CareerPlug, we believe that employee benchmarking is such a critical part of an efficient, effective, and informed hiring process that we include unlimited use of employee benchmarking and candidate assessments for all clients. It’s our job to help you take the guesswork out of staffing your restaurant with A-players, and our team is available to answer any questions you may have about our Applicant Tracking System or employee benchmarking. Send us an email!
